The Good Squad

During the last week we continued our jaunt along the Spanish coast line, leaving the Costa del Sol and venturing into a small area called the Costa Tropical, also known as Costa Granada. Interestingly, it has a pleasant micro climate here of both mild winters and mild summers, due to the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, resulting in more rain and shelter from the Northerlies; abundant irrigation has created a lusciously fertile countryside, I presume giving it its Tropical title. We are certainly making the most of the mild winter, with temperatures reaching 19 degrees, and for now the shorts are staying on. The Pompidou Centre, Malaga We enjoyed our stay in Malaga, a lovely city, with great beaches and a vibrant feel to it. It seemed markedly different to the holiday resorts of Torremolinos, Marbella and Fuengirola, which were a lot brasher and less cultured. We spent three days in Malaga in total, the first couple of days we parked within walking distance of the c...

Stormy skies over the bus In last week’s post we were at Torreguadia, a fairly nondescript town a few miles outside Gibraltar. We spent two nights there, enjoying having a bit more space and being parked alongside the beach, albeit a not particularly pretty one, with coarse grey sand, lots of bamboo washed up, but still, it felt spacious after Gibraltar. Just down the road was a big residential community called Sotogrande, with a marina, lots of ‘exclusive’, i.e. expensive shops selling boating gear, pricey clothes and home décor and many estate agents. It felt soulless and was not at all our kind of place, although it was nice to walk around the marina looking at the yachts. After a couple of nights at Torreguadia we decided to descend on the Costa del Sol and immerse ourselves in all it had to offer. I’d never been to the Costa del Sol before, previously only ever going directly to Almeria, a bit further north, where Dad and step-mum Julie lived for the last thirty years or so....

We managed to stay an entire week in Gibraltar, which was no mean feat considering no camping is allowed there. It was something of a hostile environment right from the start, when going through border control, after showing our passports, another customs officer banged his fist on the bus for us to stop, and said, "so what's this, a caravan?" A bit of an absurd question, since it's fairly obvious we are not. Anyway, they let us through, and off we went to try to find a suitably covert spot to park up. Parked between the building works & mosque The first noticeable thing about Gib was the amount of traffic, it's roads were incredibly busy with cars and mopeds flying about in all directions - surprising since it's relatively small and you could walk around it in a couple of hours. Maybe it's because of its tax free status - I presume new cars are cheaper there, as we saw many car showrooms; either that or Gib folk are just plain lazy (we did see m...

Flamingos in Portugal Firstly, Happy New year - I hope 2019 is shaping up excellently for everyone. It’s been a while since I last posted, what with handing over to Nina last week, so I have plenty to fill you in on…. After enjoying the winter solstice in Torres D’ Aires we decided to spend the next few days at a pretty town a few miles along the coast called Fuseta. We planned to pitch up at a camp site we’d looked up, not minding to pay for a bit of luxury over Christmas, to have electricity, use the toilets, showers etc. However, on arriving and having a look around we were put off - there were lots of hidden costs - for example, you paid for the pitch, then for each person, then something extra for the dog, extra for the electric, extra for this, extra for that. Also, the site was largely populated with French people, not that I have anything against the French, but it was pretty much a colony, with many people living there permanently and it felt a bit like going to a pa...