Friday 12th December

It’s been a few days since we’ve posted but there is a good reason for that, the weather has been absolutely fantastic and we’ve decided to have a weeks beach holiday, sorry if it’s snowing where you are!!

We left Denia on Monday morning and weren’t very sad to leave it behind to be honest. The site had no redeeming features, the beach was OK and we sunbathed all day Sunday whilst the natives were wrapped up in scarves, wooly hats, gloves and coats. It wasn’t hot but it was definitely shorts and t-shirt weather. Apparently my mother has been to Denia and it snowed. She’s up in Yorkshire at the moment and it is snowing today. If you ever want to go skiing take my mum with you.

We’d paid for two nights with the thought of doing the washing but the laundry block was dismal and we decided to put all our dirty washing in a black bin bag and stick that in the cellar and start over with an empty laundry basket. So far I estimate that I have worn about a fifth of the clothes in my wardrobe and there are more clothes in the cellar, that’s one of the problems of having so much storage space, you really do fill it.

We continued heading south stopping in Benidorm for 30 minutes while we restocked the wine. I found a case of 24 Portuguese beers for €4.99 which are worth every cent. Benidorm itself is very built up and you can only wonder at how packed the beaches are in the summer by the number of hotels there.

Moving on south we refilled with LPG and diesel, we were on our way to a wild camping spot that Adam and Sophie (www.europebycamper.co.uk) had used but Stella flagged up a spot and I pulled in for a well earned lunch on the beach.

This is just to the north of El Campello, you may be able to see some of the high rise hotels in Benidorm in the distance.

So this is our wild camping spot. My back is to the sea and there is parking to the left for cars and to the right for anyone else. I thought it was great, there was just enough slope on the road that we didn’t need to chock the wheels up but Lucy wasn’t happy. There was a big dog in the garden next to us so I had to move on.

We drove through El Campello finding another wild camping spot that had been shut down and blocked to vehicles so we carried on towards Alicante and then we accidentally found an aire. It was in our All the Aires book advertised at €14 per night so we had dismissed it, we didn’t need an aire since everything was full up that needed to be full up and everything that needed to be empty was empty but there were big banners on the fence saying €9 per night so we had a look.

The aire has been open for three weeks. We’ve got electric hook up, toilets, showers, laundry and wifi. We can just see the sea which is about 400m away and the sun was shining so I booked in for five nights. The electric is just a 6A supply so everytime we put the kettle on it trips but after 60 seconds the trip resets itself and by the third trip the kettle has boiled.

The wifi is a bit slow and you’re meant to go and sit on the terrace to pick up the signal but our wifi antenna is doing the job and I can sit in doors. We’ve been told that the wifi should be running at full speed on Sunday (the day after we leave).

This is our beach. Big and clean with footpath and tram running along the front right into El Campello one way and almost to Alicante going the other way. We’ve got a big supermarket half a mile away and don’t really need any more than this. We took a walk into El Campello on Wednesday because we needed to post a letter back home to Emma and found the large weekly market just about to close. Tangerines were on sale at €1 for 3kg, same for tomatoes. Theres no danger of us getting scurvy in Spain.

Again, we are the only people daft enough to be sun bathing but there were a couple of surfers in budgie smugglers which ensured that Lucy didn’t get to have a sleep on the beach. And she has the cheek to call me a pervert!

We’re on our way past Alicante tomorrow, not sure how far past we are going, if Adam and Sophie have got it right it won’t be very far.