Thursday 12 January 2017

Peniscola to Segerbe - 102 miles

Awoke to another bright sunny morning but again cool until the sun had got properly up; then it got properly warm, at last! A little bit of packing away and service the van before breakfast then we were on our way by 11.00. We have enjoyed our stay but, without other means of transport, we could not imagine staying here for very long, even with well-discounted site fees.

So three targets today; shopping, get Bertie washed and buy an ACSI card. Having found several caravan dealers/accessory shops we've programmed them into Nellie and organised a route south that includes them. Meanwhile we'll keep an eye open for a decent supermarket and a lavado, but strangely they seemed to be lacking – on reflection we now recall we noticed this the first time we traversed this route, but northbound.

The next biggish place was Castello so we turned off and eventually picked up signs for a centro commercial but after driving round and round we were unable to find anywhere to park within reasonable walking distance. There was an underground car-park................ So back onto the route, which was now quite busy because the N340 we were following had merged with an autovia. The next town proper was Segunto but although it did appear a bit sleepy we found directions to an out-of-town centro commerciale and a nice big Carrefour with room for us.

Our first big shop of the trip, i.e. for almost everything, and once again we were amazed at how much we were able to cram into lockers etc. but that should keep us going for a little while. A late lunch before investigating a couple of lavados but they were either too small or jet-wash only which isn't enough given the state of Bertie. Nevertheless we might have to take that option.

Many hilltop castles - this is Segunto

Getting to mid-afternoon a check of the maps showed a decided lack of places to stop that would enable us to visit a caravan place, but there were a couple of aires inland up in the hills which looked okay and weren't too far away so we chose the nearest, at Segorbe. A quick sprint along an autovia took us to roadside parking bays in a quiet road on the edge of town near the station. A pleasant enough spot, marred only by the small park alongside being used as a dog loo – well it wasn't that bad but you watched where you were walking! We joined a few other vans and settled in – nice sunset.

Berties's STILL dirty

We have noticed that the weather is decidedly warmer here – as I write at 8.45 pm the temperature is 23 deg in the van and we've got the roof vents open. Yes it is cooler outside but still possible to go walkies in shirtsleeves! We see the UK is getting a bit chilly now – sorry folks!