And they're off.....

Day 13.

Ok, so Barcelona is behind us, we have six more weeks of adventure so c'mon, let's do it.
It's a good bit warmer further south, so we made an early, for us, start. Wonder where we'll be sleeping tonight? We said our goodbyes to the lovely Lidia and pointed Helga towards Barcelona.
This will be fun, I thought. Seeing how the bus driver handled the traffic unsettled me, but as I've said to M, you only need to worry about what is immediately in front of you, and either side.
Norman had brought us fairly close to our previous destination, he should do better this time because I have a picture of a hammer taped to his wiring!
When we first got into Spain, I thought it lacked way behind France in every way. I still believe it, in comparison the place is generally boggin', and the heat of summer just seems to make it worse.
Here's another quandary, I don't really like the big resorts full of kiss me quick hats, full English breakfast, British beer sold here, you know, all that stuff. I like to go away and see the culture and taste it. Margaret likes the Costas. The glaring lights, promenades packed with tomato skinned holiday makers. Give me a mountain or coastline drive anyday.
Well, we've had loads of mountain driving so far, and I think the vast majority of the next thousand miles will be coastal. If we must stay in resorts that's no problem, like all things in life, compromise.
Our drive took us through another small, and low compared to earlier mountain range, down to the coast. HGV's were thinning out and motor homes were growing in number, a friendly wave from each one makes me wonder why caravanners don't do it.
We stopped somewhere to make coffee and stretch our legs, it was here we decided to try ould Norman again. We put the coordinates of an Aire, albeit a commercial one, in and set off. Our biggest problem is trying to understand how they put the addresses into the book. Some sites have almost proper set ups, while others look as if they are actual places, and the others, well that's baffling. Maybe we are still motor homing virgins!
We drove along admiring the different hues of blue coming off the Med, dusty litter strewn roadsides and the manic drivers that are Spain itself.
Time to turn off the road, and this was my mistake. I exited about thirty meters to early, and found us penned in between a .1.6 metre bridge and a 2 metre one. I never noticed the exit route and thought we would have to reverse up a no entry back onto the main coast road. A five point turn in a very difficult environment brought us round so that we saw another car make an exit up a half hidden ramp. We escaped unscathed yet again, this is getting bloody tiresome, and discovered we were once again on the correct road. Norman, who of course had been silent through the whole incident barked into life, "continue for six hundred meters then turn right".
Having no real choice, we soldiered on, it was getting to be another of those situations, were the road was thinning considerably and again no turning space.
All of a sudden, a sign declaring Orange Grove camping and Norman stating we reached our destination. I kissed his wee screen in relief and stepped down to book us in.
Oh no.
Fully booked, this site run by an English family and having all we needed was full. The really helpful lady running it pointed us seemingly reluctantly to an Aire just down the road. They had two spaces, mainly because he had thirty nine vans packed in like sardines. There is well in excess of a million quids worth of fav here, if there was a fire......
We were glad of our pitch though, it again had everything we needed, we'd been to busy at the last place to get all the laundry done, so we would use this place to wash and put away the winter clothes. Oh yes, shorts and tee shirts from now on!
Yes!!!
Most of the residents were Belgian and Dutch with a couple or three English. Boules is how they passed their afternoons, and the vast majority looked as if they'd been down here for months, judging by the colour.
A small thing that has caught my attention. We were kinda half way down France and I noticed a very  pretty girl waiting for her lift one morning, a couple of days later again, I saw another couple of pretty girls, not together, waiting for their lift. They always seem to be on a main road and miles from anywhere. It was all very strange. After about a week of this the penny dropped. They were not waiting for a lift to work, they were waiting for a lift TO work. All bar one were extremely pretty and that's what gave the game away. That and their figures and figure hugging clothing.
But first thing in the morning on the way to work?
Is that overtime, or leg over time?
Anyway, where was I?
Right, we tend not to do to much on our first night, anywhere over here.
The driving or sitting just makes us so tired.
We have yet to buy anything to actually cook, main course wise, because the freezer was full of stuff from the house. In three days it will be time to go meat shopping or fish or whatever looks interesting. By then it will be, or should be a barby every night.
In the morning we awoke to brilliant blue skies and warm sunshine, a wee walk into town for spuds and wine, well, we have to have our priorities right.
All the way down through Spain we passes thousands of acres of vineyards, cherry blooom trees awaiting their bounty of fruit, olive groves fields of vegetables, and here in the Valencia region, countless millions of orange trees. Our walk down to the town took us past lemon groves, grapefruit, and dozens of orange groves. I just leant over the fence and pulled a few from the trees, some of which we ate as we walked along.
Honestly, it makes raiding orchies at home seem trivial.