Our latest rip is to the combined Club Motorhome, Motorroamers and Facts meet at Denia and Calpe on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

We arrived a couple of days before the start of the meeting and were nicely settled in by the time everyone else had arrived.

The meet has got off to a good start thanks to the excellent organisation skills of C7KEN!
Yesterday was the first official day and Ken held a welcome meeting to elaborate on his plans ( at the local bar ). He's got plans for a cycle ride to show new visitors the local facilities and a ride into Denia.

We got off to a flying start with a raffle that we are holding to contribute to our chosen charity Asthma UK with over 90€ raised so far - A BIG thank you to all that have bought tickets. The draw will be on the Paella Day which if I remember rightly is Saturday. The prizes being: 2 Club Motorhome Tee shirts, A Club Motorhome baseball cap, A £5, 2 x £10 and a £30 memership vouchers . (If you are not at the rally but would like to help by donating we have a donation button on the front page of the Club Motorhome website)

But its not all busy, busy, busy - The beach is only a short walk away...

St Feliu de Guixols is a lovely Spanish resort, the fact that there is a free Aire makes it even better!

Since our first visit here new services have been installed - also free. Its an Aire that's not listed in all the guides but we have the details on Club Motorhome of course!

After St Feliu we set off for Peniscola using non-toll roads which meant a 6 hour journey (half it if using tolls) but the roads were mostly good. I (semi) jokingly reminded Caroline to have her camera at the ready to snap any of the infamous Barcelona Bandits if they tried to stop us as we passed the city, but as usual no sign.....

At the end of the long day's drive we pulled in at the Peniscola Aire, no need for hookup so just €8. The Aire was pretty busy but not with Brits. Aires rules normally say no chairs, awnings, etc and this one has a whopping great sign up but still you see lots of awnings, chairs etc in use. Must just be to keep the authorities happy tohave a sign up?

Our last day of this trip was to some beachside wild camping near Gandia where we met up, by chance, with friends Dick and Jackie in their Autotrail. We had a very pleasant evening catching up on our respective travels during the past year.

Next outing is to the Spain 2012 meet at Denia and Calpe, looking forward to it already!

From Vers we travelled a couple of hundered more miles south to an Aire that was new to us at Fanjeaux, a charming and very old village high up with great surrounding views including the snow capped Pyrenees.

Several more vans squeezed onto the Aire for the night and the  next morning we had a wander around the ancient village.

Next stop on our list was one of our favourite beachside Aires, Leucate Plage. We've stayed several times in the past, for as much as a week at a time. Situated right on the beach its a perfect spot!

We met Andy and Caroline from the UK who were returning from their over-wintering trip to Spain and Portugal, they'd had a great 3 months but were looking forward to getting back home. Their 2 Jack Russells became good buddies with Digger and enjoyed running amok on the beach 

Leucate is a payment Aire but when we arrived the recently installed new payment system was not working which was a nice bonus, although we discovered that the water was turned off too. The next morning however, engineers arrived to commission the system for the season and turned it back on - although the barriers stayed open. We had been very lucky on this trip with overnight charges so far being ZERO!

We had a good day's admin on the van at Leucate, tidying through and re-arranging some storage and this morning left after a lazy start for Spain.

We're at St Feliu de Gixols near Girona tonight along with about a dozen other vans and again we have free wifi!

We're route planning for our next trip which is mostly on familiar ground between Valencia and Norfolk in England.

It's an exciting trip as we plan to arrive around the time our fifth grandchild is born.

We have a vets appointment booked for next week so that Digger gets his annual rabies shot and anything else he needs before entering the UK.

So all that's left is to finalise our route. Its not a great time of year to be travelling up through France and we expect that we will find water taps turned off where frost is a problem but we'll manage.

We're going to take a couple of weeks en-route using some coastal wildcamping for a few days to make the most of the sunshine before actually heading north.

Our first stop will be a campsite that we used last time on the way down at Huesca in northern Spain, we have to time it right as they only open at weekends at this time of year. From there we'll head around the Pyrenees (likely to be too icy and snowy to consider going over the top) and into the Aire at Hendaye Plage. Next is a short hop north to Mimizan Plage where we'll hang around a few days if the weather is kind.

There's a handy little village called Chaunay for our next stop where there is official paking in the centre, even has free electricity - or at least it did last time we were there a couple of years ago.

Next stop on our provisional list is Brezolles where we will have an appointment for Digger to receive the relevant meds to keep Customs happy.

Our last planned stop is Le Crotoy where we'll probably just stay one night before our prebooked crossing via Eurotunnel.

So that's it, all very changeable between now and then or even while we travel. Isn't that just the greatest thing about motorhoming?