The Journey Home from Malaga

The flight on 27th November was all good. I take a taxis from the airport and meet Daniel at Bar de la Axarquia . The taxis took a strange route heading north up the coast almost to Almeria before at last turning inland and up into the mountains, making it unnecessarily expensive, the flight was half the price, odd economics!

The weather in my, and Daniel's absence, he went to see his mum in Glasgow, has been more of the deluge seen in Valencia and Almeria. Apparently a year's rainfall in a day. Daniel and friends were busy shovelling away everything washed down from the mountain. Still the mountain is now green having recovered from two years of drought, the roads will get fixed and everyone will do their own bit of restoration. Daniel has three massive towers of water now fully charged for watering the veg patch. In the meantime I had the opportunity to work on the loose towbar. Tightened up the bolts as best I could. Would have liked to have done better but the job will get me back to the UK where it can be fixed professionally.

I set off from Comares on the 29th, daughter Ellie's birthday when she landed in Thailand to link up with friends. I had always intended to follow the med north to Barcelona and Daniel supported the plan, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia should not be missed, so that's where I head calling first at Riogardo and on to Vinuela. Well, that's not quite right, at some point Google takes me along a track badly ravaged by the rains and I stop overnight being in fear of driving over a cliff. In the morning someone jogs past stopping to chat 'Hello we saw you last night having just driven along the track we call 'disaster,' very brave, we are from Brighton';

so many Brits in Spain. I stop for a couple of nights at Camping Rural Presa la Vinuela overlooking a reservoir. Despite the recent rains the drought over the past couple of years has reduced the lake by half.

I move on to Playa La Rumina where I spot a kite on the water, a lone foiler. This turns out to be Rafek. We get to chat and he suggests tomorrow will be reasonable wind so off I go to find a campsite at Mojacar.

The view is spectacular, looks like we just missed the age of creation! The campsite is very pleasant and mainly occupied by vans over wintering, mainly Germans and Brits.

The next day I'm early to the beach and get on the water with a cross shore 12kts wind. It's going ok but I'm heading directly out to sea so stop and head back to shore. I dive the kite a little to hard on a port tack and get pulled over the front. The board is close, I launch the kite and body drag towards it. Where did it go? As I scan the sea for the board I'm now drifting down the beach and the next time I see it I'm well down wind, which has dropped, making it difficult to launch the kite. The only thing to do is to get to the shore where someone kindly puts the kite on the beach and I struggle over rocks and out of the water. Another walk of shame carrying my kit a kilometre back up the beach.

Horrible off shore wind the next day so I head for Alicante. No joy there, Penny is in the UK, so I take Rafek's suggestion and aim for Delta del Ebro. Passing Valencia a green and verdant landscape with orange groves and surrounded by mountains, I reach the delta. This is the rice producing area of Spain completely flat similar to the fens in the UK, but underwater.

The wind is completely mad. 'Windy Ap' suggests 50knts gusting at 100knts, that's insane! To be fair its more like 20kts in the morning. I had initially gone to Riumar on the northern shore but then found the more sheltered water to the south, a wonderful location, shallow water way out into the bay. I get set-up and a woman prepares to launch my kite.

A lot of arm waving and gesticulating. When the kite was released it hung momentarily, a small tweak and bang, it shot into the sky dragging me after it. I land on the sand with a thump and several bodies fall on me releasing the safety, 'Are you ok?' Well that was a shock, what had gone wrong? My legs hurt but nothing was broken and after a bit I stagger back to the van. By this time the wind was howling and I go back to town to nurse my wounds at the local bar. I've seen this kind of thing before but not as violent. It must have been one of those gusts, not much I could do about it.

In the morning I was feeling well bruised and could hardly walk. Barcelona was just 180 miles away now, so I decided to sit in the van for a few hours of motorway driving. I found a campsite to the north of the city on a bus route and after a cold night took a ride into the city, It was freezing, this is supposed to be the Mediterranean!

I take the city tour hop on, hop off bus and the first sight of Basilica de la Sagrada Familia is so exiting. Here you can clearly see the unfinished central tower with still a further 40m to go.

Just an extraordinary building.  Still unfinished, with an incomplete central spire, the building is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

Inside, the columns,

capitals and stained glass, just extraordinarily beautiful.

I spend two days in Barcelona, go to the harbour area, the America Cup site and the Aquarium. I make my way to the Gaudi Park but fail to get in, 'you need to book a ticket sir, this is the second most popular site after the Basilica'. Yea right, how come I was able to book a ticket to the Basilica and gain immediate access but can't get in here? Well it was raining and cold and getting dark, maybe it's time to head for Santander and the ferry.

After on fine drive through the mountains on long straight empty roads, by Thursday I'm looking for a campsite around Graus. I've tried four, all closed and I'm getting tired backing up and turning with the trailer. This is quite tricky since I can't see the trailer until it has turned and it's very easy to jackknife it into the back of the van, as I did in France a couple of years ago. I'm looking for somewhere to stop and find a semi industrial area on a straight drag with garage workshops and yes, a bar in the distance and a floodlit monastery behind on the hill. The bar is ok, has good Wifi and the staff are friendly but no one speaks English. I get on the Brittany ferry site and to my horror see there are no sailings from Bilboa until 2025! There is a sailing from Santander on Saturday (full) and again on Wednesday. I call the office but they can't get me on the Saturday sailing and I book for Wednesday.

On Friday I find Google says I'm 6hr drive to Santander, so why not try for the Saturday ferry? If I get to the port early, I'll try to blag a change of ticket.

After a great drive though the mountains from Graus and just a bit tricky on the A240 when it got dark, the main beam needs to be fixed, those hairpin bend appear from nowhere! I get to the port around 20:00. I try several circuits checking out the entrance in case I could overnight there, but no luck. I seem to take all the wrong turns to a campsite but fortunately this time they were open and I get my head down and an early start to the ferry port in the morning. It seems I had missed the entrance the night before and this time drove straight to check-in. My bus was much admired and when I explained my wish to get on the sailing at 13:00. 'No problem sir, there should be space and you have a flexi ticket, so nothing to pay.' Wow, I'm on!

A four hour wait for the sailing but I'm put right at the front of the boat for a quick get-away once docked in Portsmouth. Things are looking up. A shower and then I hit the bar, well not really, I had booked the Club Lounge, free wine and snacks. In fact there is a full menu so it's great value and well worth doing.

A smooth crossing and first off the boat at Portsmouth, home for Christmas.

Got to start planning for 2025 I guess.