Friday 20th January 2017

Rincon de la Victoria to Estepona - 87 miles

The wind dropped overnight and the skies cleared to make it quite cold, although we didn't need the heating on. Jamie sick yet again – think it maybe his bedtime treats so we'll try cutting them out. Our plan today is to continue on to Estepona and try to get onto the ACSI campsite there for a few days so we can catch up with everything ready to cross to Morocco. We also need to exchange our Spanish gas bottle.

Derek and June were away first, they've got a couple of things to do before Estepona, but we weren't far behind them on a lovely sunny morning. It was our idea to stay on the coast road so we could look for a gas station but somehow we ended up, firstly on the ordinary motorway then trying to get back onto the coast road where we were struggling with town centres etc. only to find ourselves rejoining the motorway. Another attempt and a missed turn and we were on the toll motorway heading in, not exactly the wrong direction but not the way we wanted to go. €2.80 later saw us on the coast road then the A7 again. Stuff it, we could be going backward and forward for ages and a 1 ½ hour trip had already taken 2 hrs and we were nowhere near our destination.

As it happens the campsite is literally just off the A7 so we stuck to it but could not find a gas station for our particular brand, Cepsa. We thought we had changed the bottle last year quite close to the campsite so decided to continue on into Estepona but that too found us wandering the back streets until a bit of slick navigation got us onto the coast road back. Then we spotted a Cepsa station, only to find they had no propane and would not accept our bottle for butane which would have been okay. We'll go onto the internet later; meanwhile to the campsite.

We'd stayed on Parque Tropicale before and found Derek and June had arrived shortly before us. It was very busy and we were lucky to get one of the last 3 pitches still free, not in an ideal position vis-a-vis the sunshine but almost next to our friends – we'll sit in their sun! We of course had ACSI cards but they were good enough to give Derek and June the same rate.

So settle in, lunch and spend the afternoon sorting out and generally catching up. As the sun went down it got cool again; the lady on the next pitch thought we might get frost tonight!