Club Motorhome Bloggers

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.

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!

A very pleasant stop at Magnac-Bourg, its a very pretty and traditional village. 4 other motorhomes shared the Aire and they were all French - its not very touristy here, which is nice .

After a liesurely start (the best kind!) we made use of the free services and made our way to our next overnight stop at Vers in the Midi-Pyrenees region.

We found the Aire easily enough although it was one of those journeys where TomTom tries to take you down some dodgy looking roads, sometimes we ignore it and re-route and others we just go with it. This does seem to let us see some of the real back-and-beyond hamlets in France though. The Aire is basic but OK, next to a campsite that is closed until the summer so its quiet, only one other van which is English and on their way back from Tenerife and Gran Canaria in it!

As I'm typing this 2 more (French) vans have arrived.

The bonus with this place is that I found some more unsecured wifi! Hence this update . A while back I invested in a Faculty-X long range antenna and this is one of the few times it has been worthwhile.

Firstly, and most importantly, the long awaited grandchild arrived under HIS own steam just 2 weeks late and weighed in at an impressive 9lb 13oz!

After saying cheerio to others in the family we set off for our Eurotunnel crossing arriving in France in the dark and we headed to an Aire that we used a couple of years ago at Equihen Plage. Parking on the clifftop we quickly cooked our dinner and settled in for the rest of the evening, with that 'happy to be travelling again' feeling 

At around 9 the next morning we were woken by the police knocking on our door asking for €5, not being ready for this as last time it was free we only then wondered where we had stashed our Euros while in the UK. I found a little loose change in the ashtray and apologised to the officer who after a short exchange (the best I can do in French) he shrugged and wished us a good day - I think....

We had been in contact with friends and members 'stevegreen' as they were returning from their overwintering in Portugal. They had suggested our next stop as it had been recommended to them. By mid afternoon we met up at Criel sur Mer, a designated motorhome parking area just off the beach. It was a great opportunity for our 'Digger' to meet their 'Jack', they are friends on Facebook (yes really..... they each have their own pages - and many friends!)

We had a great meetup with Steve, Lorna and Jack and enjoyed their hospitality and lots (too many) glasses of Leffe and Bordeaux so the next morning was a slow start for all of us.

Well, we're still waiting around for our overdue grandchild but tomorrow is going to be the day!

In the meantime we took the opportunity to stay at our latest Pub Stopover - The House on the Green at North Wootton on the outskirts of Kings Lynn in Norfolk. Its a lovely old country/village pub and I've made it a featured stopover on Club Motorhome.

The landlord is very keen to encourage motorhomes to stay over and we are happy to recommend the pub if you are passing that way.

The trip up through France was much as planned, the only change of nightstop was Biarritz instead of Hendaye Plage. We wanted to have electricity where possible for heating as we had been expecting some very cold temperatures.

Typically unsecured WiFi was as hard to find as usual, hence the lack of blog updates en-route. As things turned out we were quite fortunate with the weather, only getting misty, foggy stuff from the northern half of France upwards.

Pets Passport at the Eurotunnel terminal was straightforward and they actually checked Digger's chip this time, unlike last time when we could have had any old dog with us. They even gave us a free copy of Practical Motorhome Magazine and a couple of Dog magazines too.

We've been in the UK a week now and are getting through our list of jobs while here and still waiting for the new grandchild to arrive......

I discovered 2 consequences of our last minute packing efforts:

We managed to set off yesterday after hastily packing the van - we do seem to leave this to the last minute lately!

Anyway, our normal routine is to travel about 35 kilometers to our favourite beach side wildcamp area, where we finish packing stuff into proper areas in the van and make up the bed etc. We also had the chance to say hello to some people that we saw last year at the same spot.

The location is not very scenic in the parking area but is literally just next to a lovely beach, VERY quiet at this time of year and great for walking Digger - it was from here that we rescued him a whole year ago!

We dined on pizzas an enjoyed a DVD before turning in, knowing we had a fairly long drive the next day.....

So today we were up and about earlyish for us and prepared for our long leg north to Huesca. Before we left I wandered around our parking area and lost count of the motorhomes - at least 60 and a dozen of them Brits. Most vans being Dutch with a proportion of German, its certainly becoming a popular spot .

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.

If you have read other motorhomers blogs with interest you may have wondered how to go about starting your own. Maybe to keep a record of your travels or maybe just an online diary that your friends and family can read?

In order to start a blog you normally need to acquire your own domain name and a hosting package for that domain, you then need the software to set out the layout and content of your blog. There are free methods of doing this but it can be quite complicated and somewhat confusing if you don't feel to confident with computer technology.

Well, after trying other blog software in the past we have now invested in some dedicated blog software for use within the Club Motorhome website. This makes it very easy for any subscribing member to start their own blog and of course it's free!

There are 2 ways to get to the start point:

1. Subscribing members will notice on their profile page that there is a new tab 'My Blog'. Clicking on this gives the option to 'Write an entry' - that's it! Just write away and submit your copy to build up your own blog.