Camping Monmar - Post 5

Tuesday 5th to Monday 11th February 2019 - mostly lots of lovely 🌞🌞🌞 🌞🌞🌞 but with occasional short periods⛅⛅⛅ and one afternoon of murky fog!
Motorhome Miles 0 and 🚴🚴 miles about 139
Parking Co-ordinates 39.8085, -0.12743

As I signed off in my last Blog Post I told you that my darling husband had a fiendish plan to ensure we did much more exercise this week than last!   And we did - all 139 miles of long and short rides over a 5 day period + a bit extra on Monday (today) - but I'm only going to bore you with a few details of the first which was last Tuesday.

On that day we headed for the hills in the pic above!  They rise up about 6 miles away from the campsite, and in all we peddled for 43 miles through spectacular countryside and mountain villages.  The early part of our ride took us into the Serra National Park and up towards the pretty mountain town of Eslida which we saw from both below as we approached it, and then from high above as we continued up the steep slopes to reach the Summit d'Eslida at 620 metres.

Looking up the hill towards Eslida

And looking down on the town from high above!

As is our usual habit we paused at the top for our picnic lunch and enjoyed magnificent far reaching views along with a huge slice of peace and tranquillity!  And then as an additional reward for the hard work of climbing up, we quickly glided back down on the nearly traffic free roads with John leading the way and me trying diligently (and failing) to keep up with his often 30 mph+  😱🙈😱 decent.


But as usual we made it down safely and as we dropped lower there were many hundreds of beautiful almond trees in full blossom on terraced  slopes in almost every direction that we looked.

Fish Stew 😋😋

Our  rides on the other days included a couple of 10 milers along the coast for coffee and cake on Wednesday and Friday, a 32 miler to the Port of Sagunto on Thursday, and a 30 mile circular ride to Burriana on Saturday!  So on Sunday, with nothing much else to do, we awarded ourselves a day off - or maybe the reason for that was the late night we had after attending Saturday's Rally meal which had a Spanish theme and was a vast improvement on previous ones.

Then as usual, Monday was spent doing our housework (which took all of half an hour) shopping and also a little extra 14 mile ride that took us out along the coast again for lunch.   But that still left plenty of time for sunning ourselves and chattering a bit more about our forthcoming plans regarding our ongoing living arrangements.  This has been one of the main topics of our conversations for the last few months because we haven't quite been able to make up our minds as to how we want to proceed over the next few years, but the only thing we were quite sure about is that we want it to continue roaming for a good while yet!

One of our first forays with this quest in mind was to look at a 5th wheel and a truck, and although the layouts were very enticing, having one, fell flat on it's face for several reasons!  The first thing that put us off was the sheer enormous size of the vehicle (and we only looked at a small one) because it would have been impossible to site it on a lot of British camp sites, and another worry  was the legality of ensuring we were able to keep within the weight restriction of the tow truck (a Nevara or a Mizubishi).  We'd been advised that one or the other of these would have been adequate, but when John looked at the total 'train weight' it seemed we'd only have had about 250 kg available for our gear which would have had to include our bikes. Additionally, the cost of setting up such a rig was almost beyond our means so at that stage we were quickly back at the drawing board!

Next we considered towing with our present van and either having a Smart Car or a quad bike, but that won't be happening either because apparently it's unlikely that we could have a tow bar fitted because of issues with the build of our chassis.

After that we more or less convinced ourselves we'd go for a car and a traditional caravan, and we did a lot of research to ensure that whatever we brought would fully meet all our needs.  This solution would also have huge benefits with regard to space and luxury, but the big downside was the fact that we'd no longer be able to 'wild camp' or use Aires (because they are completely restricted to motorhomes), thus we'd become entirely reliant  on camp sites.  Our bikes were also an issue with this idea because again, the pay load for most caravans is only about 170 kg and also mounting them on the van was going to be a problem as most modern English vans only have a very short hitch that doesn't allow room for a bike rack.

But then, all of a sudden,  the penny dropped and our minds were made up because 'maybe the grass wouldn't be greener on the other side'!    For the last 3 and a bit years we've thoroughly enjoyed living how we do, and while we've been out riding recently we've spotted quite a few vans of different nationalities 'wild camping' right on the sea front, and even though we might only do this occasionally we decided we didn't want to give up our freedom to choose!  We've also still got a huge amount of exploring to do - both back in Blighty and in Europe (as long as Brexit allows) and T4rdis2 is definitely the best vehicle to facilitate our travel plans.  Therefore, we're not moving house after all because, at the moment, Our grass is very green just the way we are !  So the final decision seems to be that we'll just spend a bob or two improving what we've got  and get on with continuing to enjoy our idyllic nomadic lifestyle for the foreseeable future!

T4rdis2 enjoying a free spot somewhere in France!!

Bye for now😙😙

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