Pootling down the East Coast of Spain

Friday 18 November – Sunday 27 November 2022

It was raining when we crossed the border into Spain on Friday. This wasn’t the weather that we’d ordered!

Undeterred, we retreated to a Mercadona supermarket for our first Spanish shop. We found most of our favourite items, but not the sausages we’ve become partial to on previous trips. You can’t win ’em all.

Overnight: Llagostera

We spent Friday night at Llagostera, a smallish town to the South of Girona. The town itself didn’t seem overly inviting from what we could see as we drove through, but the motorhome aire was free (and correspondingly busy).

Saturday saw us drive a couple of hours to the medieval town of Montblanc:

It was all very pretty, but the place was bizarrely deserted. Almost everything in the historic centre (inside the walls) seemed closed and very few people were out and about.

We decided that there would probably be much more going on in the main summer season.

From Montblanc, we drove the short distance to Poblet, picking up LPG, Adblue and diesel at a very good (and cheap) petrol station on the way.

Each time I went back into the shop to pay, the friendly lady behind the counter told me the amount in Euros, then did a very theatrical “y con desCUENto”, followed by a lower amount. Fuel here is subject to a government discount, and very generous it is too: 20 euro cents a litre. We even got the discount on the Adblue and LPG (which, given that LPG is only about a Euro a litre to start with, means a good percentage reduction – it’s a pity we’re normally only buying about ten litres a time).

Our reason for going to Poblet was to visit the Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet. We parked up for the night on the town car park (which allows parking for 24 hours; another couple of motorhomes were there too).

Overnight: Poblet

Santa Maria de Poblet is a Cistercian monastery founded in the mid 12th century. Spain had its own Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1835 but the monks returned in 1940 after the Spanish Civil War and the buildings were refurbished.

The monastery opened at 10.30am on Sunday but there was no danger of us oversleeping. The bells started ringing at ten to five in the morning for Lauds. They were loud. And they went on.. and on… and on. You’d have thought that the local residents would have had a whip round by now and bought the monks an alarm clock each.

The cloisters (above) are very pretty and the lavatorium (in the centre of the photo above, and below, is the most impressive I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for mucky mitts here….

The monks’ refectory gave us an idea of just how few monks there are nowadays judging from the number of places set (we weren’t given any numbers):

Indeed, the modern monks have managed to pretty much separate off the parts of the monastery that they might want to use during opening hours (the monastery is closed for a period over lunchtime whilst the monks no doubt troop into the refectory).

For example, a cunningly placed bookcase allows visitors to see through a glass door at the ceiling of the old scriptorium, now used as a library, without being able to see any monks who may be hard at work below:

Other parts of the visitor route are no longer in use. This is the old monks’ dormitory:

The church is interesting. Like most Cistercian monasteries, Poblet started off very austere. Then, in the mid 14th century, a King of Aragon and abbot of the monastery happened to coincide who shared much more modern and decorative tastes.

Their collaboration eventually resulted in a very non-austere altarpiece and a royal pantheon – 8 Kings of Aragon and Counts of Barcelona are buried here in what I can only describe as two low arch-shaped structures. They’re just about high enough to walk under.

Outside, looking at the bell towers, we could again see the progression from austere to much more decorative. The oldest bell-tower, on the left, is the one still used today to mark the times of the monks’ various activities – so is the bell that woke us up at ten to five in the morning. It stayed silent whilst we were visiting the monastery.

We drove a bit further south (an hour and a half or so) on Sunday afternoon after leaving the monastery, spending the night on a very busy free aire at L’Aldea on the Ebro Delta. We were right at the bottom end of a very long thin parking area (an old train track), so it looks a lot more isolated in the photo that it really was. There were probably 50 or so vans there in total:

Overnight: L’Aldea

Then on Monday morning we drove another hour and a half to El Grau near Castellón. We’d picked this free aire out as a good destination, but the reviews online made clear that it was very popular and would probably be full by lunchtime. We arrived at 10.45am and secured a spot without difficulty but the reviews were correct and later arrivals weren’t so lucky.

Overnight: El Grau, Castellón (2 nights)

It was so nice at El Grau that we decided to stay the maximum allowed 2 nights and have a bit of a holiday by the seaside. The aire is right on the front and within walking distance of a Mercadona supermarket, so although most of the tourist facilities in the area do seem to be closed, we had everything we needed.

We ventured 2.5 miles along the front after arriving on Monday then 3 miles on Tuesday morning which took us as far as the outskirts of the resort on Bencàssim. Mark was really taken by the logo on the public loos situated at intervals along the front in Bencàssim; the ones in El Grau are far more traditional and boring….

Unfortunately, we had to leave El Grau on Wednesday morning before the warden came round. We drove another couple of hours south, which took us around the city of Valencia and down to a small resort near Gandia.

We’d initially thought of walking into Gandia in the afternoon to look at the Ducal Palace there, but as we drove to the aire it became apparent that it was quite a walk and not at all scenic, so we went for a wander round the small town we were in, Daimús, instead.

Daimús was like something from an apolcalypse movie; the place was pretty much abandoned….

It seems to be just a resort area with very few people living here year-round.

Overnight: Dunes Camper Area, Daimús

The Dunes Camper Area was good value at €10 without electricity. It has a coin-operated washer and drier, so we got all our laundry done while we were there (€14 total).

There was an unfortunate incident just before we left on Thursday morning. I heard a crash while I was in the bathroom and, knowing that the Germans next to us had pulled out and left their table and chairs behind on their pitch, I initially just figured they’d come back and reversed into them.

Erm, no. It was the Spanish van in the next space along. They’d come a cropper on one of the small white walls you can see in the photo above that serve to separate the pitches. One end of the rear bumper had come off and was somehow wedged behind the white wall, so they were in a bit of a pickle – couldn’t go backwards without hitting the wall and couldn’t go forwards without possibly ripping the bumper off completely. You had to feel sorry for them….

We only drove for about an hour on Thursday; Mark had picked out Cabo San Antonio, a headland with a lighthouse, as a good place to visit and when we got there, we decided to stay overnight rather than continuing to the town car park further along the coast that had been our initial plan.

Overnight: Cabo de San Antonio

Our intention on Friday was to drive an hour or so south and stay at El Campello, a town by the seaside with three different motorhome aires. There was only one problem; all three were full when we got there late morning.

Many of the vans we saw seemed to be set up for the winter…. The Spanish couple with the (now repaired) bumper had just finished checking in when we arrived at one of the aires; we hope they got parked up safely this time.

So on we drove to a place called El Pinet, half an hour or so further south. The aire there was full too!

We found a beachside car park that was full of vans and had our lunch while we came up with plan E. One of the other vans there turned out to belong to a Dutch lady that Mark had been chatting to just a few days earlier at El Grau. It’s a small world; I’m sure that as in previous years, we’ll keep bumping into the same people as we all trundle along pretty much the same coastal route.

The reviews online for the beach car park suggested that the police did come round reasonably regularly at 9pm and clear everyone off, so we decided not to risk staying there.

We got lucky after driving for another 45 minutes. There’s an aire at Torrevieja that looked like it might not be so popular with the long stayers; it’s a good couple of miles from the centre of town and is wedged in between apartment blocks with no “camping behaviour” allowed – no no awnings, no setting up tables and chairs outside the van etc.

Bingo: when we arrived, the aire at Torrevieja was less than half full….. It has a sparkly clean loo/shower block, laundry facilities (which we don’t need but have made a mental note of), and only costs €10 a night without electricity.

We had a wander along to the main town; it was pretty much your standard Spanish seaside resort….

Mark decided that some particularly lobster-coloured people we saw by the beach just had to be Brits….

Overnight: Torrevieja

From Torrevieja, we spent Saturday morning doing some shopping at an Alcampo supermarket about 15 minutes away. It took most of the morning as we had to walk through an absolutely massive shopping centre to even get to the supermarket, which then turned out to be enormous.

A couple of hours’ drive brought us to Águilas. We’d identified a camper parking area here behind a petrol station. As it’s a bit of a distance from the town itself, we figured it might not be too busy with the long stayers….

When we arrived, we found that the area without electricity was almost empty but the area with electricity was, mysteriously, much fuller. Odd – so far this trip we’ve noriced that far fewer people seem to be bothering with mains hookup. Most of us have solar panels so don’t really need mains hookup in Spain, and almost everywhere seems to charge separately for it nowadays (around €3.50 a night being the going rate).

Overnight: Águilas (2 nights)

We booked onto the aire for 2 nights (at €10 a night) so as to have today (Sunday) to pootle into Águilas on our bicycles and have a look at the castle.

Here’s Mark preparing to chain our bikes to a fence on the promenade:

The castle, built in 1756 on the site of an earlier defensive structure, is perched on top of a very steep rock.

Admission was an absolute bargain at €2 each.

Exhibits in the castle told us about the history of the town and of the castle itself.

We got a great view from the castle, firstly along the part of the sea front that we’d cycled along from the aire…

… and then in the other direction…

We had a walk to the far end of the bay then walked back through the town centre to our bicycles. The shops were all closed, it being Sunday, but Águilas did seem much more like a functioning town than just a holiday resort.

It’s a pity that the marina hasn’t set up a motorhome parking area; it’d no doubt be extremely popular.

Tomorrow we plan to cross into Andalucía, “turning the corner” onto the southern coast of Spain near Almería………