Home is where I park it

 Here is a breakdown of the mileage we did on our journey: Gloucester - Margate - Dover - Calais - 267 miles Calais - Somewhere near Dreux - 221 miles Somewhere near Dreux - Somewhere near Bordeaux - 260 miles Somewhere near Bordeaux - Somewhere near Valladolid - 336 miles Somewhere near Valladolid - Ribamondego - 261 miles Ribamondego - Coimbra - 153 miles Coimbra - Ribamondego - Covas -102 miles Covas - Tabua - 24 miles Tabua - Barril do Alva - 56 miles Barril do Alva - Boa Vista - 82 miles Boa Vista - Odeciexe - 224 miles Odeciexe - Barranco - 39 miles Barranco - Vila do Bispo - Sagres - Budens - La Palma de Condado - 165 miles La Palma de Condado - Pig Field - 170 miles Pig Field - Tarifa - Los Lances - Punta Paloma - Tarifa - 201 miles Tarifa - Torreguardio - 54 miles Torreguardio - Nerja - 110 miles Nerja - Mojacar - 145 miles Mojacar - Todasol - 43 miles Todasol - Bolnuevo - 33 miles Bolnuevo - La Marina - 87 miles La Marina - Alicante - 19 miles Alic...

We stopped just south of Alicante for a couple of days at a place called La Marina. Beautiful beach there and lovely weather. Simon got to play with the kite for the last time and I practised taking photos of kites! All too soon it was time to head for the ferry in Calais. We had 5 days to cover around 1250 miles and so had to average around 250 miles a day. We stopped in Zaragoza and found a vet to check the dogs and give them the necessary tapeworm treatment. This has to be done between 1 and 5 days before entering the UK. On our first trip we had it done in France and it was so expensive, 50 euros per dog! This time we paid 40 euros for both dogs! Our last lunch stop in Spain was at an amazing view point overlooking the Parque Natural Bardenas Reales. Before we knew it we were seeing snow topped mountains and then very snowy mountains and then snow in the fields and at the side of the road! How different to the sunny beach two days ago! Our last night in Spain w...

After we did some shopping in Gibraltar we headed North along the coast famously known as the Costa del Sol. We don't ever really stop along the stretch between Estepona and Nerja and so for a night we stopped before Estepona at a small beach car park just North of Torreguadiaro. In the morning we drove through the nightmare that is the Costa del Sol! Ok some people like it but it is not our taste at all and it is just too much, beautiful Spanish villages and towns have been ruined by hotels and apartments. This photo sums up why I don't like this area! We stopped at the cemetery in Malaga to pay our respects to our Uncle Peter who died last year. Peter was a lovely man who we spent some great times with at his little house in the mountains near Alora. We had been looking forward to seeing him on this trip until he was tragically struck down with cancer. After stopping at the cemetery in Malaga we headed towards Nerja where we stayed for a couple of nights. Although s...

We had left Tarifa after 10 months living in the Pig Field in October 2012, that had been our second visit there and we had fallen in love with the place despite the strong relentless winds! 3 years later and we were back and it was such a good feeling. We arrived just a few days before Christmas and despite our 3 year absence we immediately met up with some old friends, also travellers living in their vans and spending a lot of their time in Tarifa. We also found out friends of ours had bought land very close to the Pig Field. Below is a shot of the Pig Field.  The Pig Field has been a travellers site for many years, not only is it a site for what you might call 'new travellers' or 'hippies' it is also home to many wind surfers and kite surfers who come and stay for days, weeks or months at Europe's top wind and kite surfing location. Tourists, sightseers, fishermen and locals also come in and out of the field on a daily basis. Some people in vans stay only a ...

In October 2015 we set off from Gloucester to Dover, via Margate to see family, to get the ferry to Calais. At the end of all these posts on our journey I will detail the mileage and how much we spent on ferries, fuel and tolls. Below is Dover on the day of departure. The dogs settled down to an hour and a half in the van while we had a smooth crossing over the water. Despite the media hype over the immigrant crisis in Calais we had no trouble at all leaving the port and driving away. In fact if you didn't know what was happening you wouldn't even realise anything was going on. We had a fairly uneventful journey down through France over 3 days taking the shortest route towards the Spanish border. This included the towns of Abbeville, Rouen, Chartres, Tours, Poitiers, Angouleme and Bordeaux. We didn't take any toll roads until south of Bordeaux as the A roads are nearly as good as the motorways most of the way. We crossed over into Spain at Irun and then headed straig...