9. Homeward bound 🏡❤️

The weather wasn’t great when we arrived in France so decided to press on and hopefully take advantage of the better weather forecast further north in the next couple days. Like all good plans though, the weather beat us, and by the time we arrived in Champagne it was wet and cold 🤣 Waking up to a very heavy mist we decided to give our planned bike ride along the Marme velo route a miss, and spend the day “sightseeing “ around the WW1 battlefields of the Somme. Started off at The Battle of The Somme Museum in Albert  - a very sobering experience - housed in the extensive air raid shelters / vaults underneath the imposing town cathedral, created during WW11. The artefacts, reconstructions and memorabilia offer an extremely vivid insight into the whole process of the battle and the horrendous experience of life in the trenches. The audio visual film at the start focussed on the various memorials around the region, erected to commemorate the different nations who fought in the battle - a stark reminder of just how much of the world was actively fighting in this conflict 😢 Fascinating visiting the Lochnagar Crater site, created by the largest mine explosion underneath the German front, which formed the start of the actual Battle of the Somme.

Heading into the museum

One of the many commemorative graveyards 

38th Welsh Division Memorial 

Lochnagar - the extremely poignant words of “The Lochnagar Promise For Peace” - so moving, powerful, and sadly still so relevant today 😢

Very quiet (again!) when we arrived at Calais Eurotunnel, so m was put on an earlier train. All good with Ruby’s Spanish veterinary paperwork too 👍😊  Stopped off in Kent on our way back to catch up with friends JJ, Judy & Jessica, and certainly acclimatised to the British weather with a very blustery walk along Camber Sands 😂

A blustery walk

Dramatic clouds and lighting on Camber Sands

Lovely friends ❤️

So the trip has come to an end, and what a fantastic adventure it was! As usual we only had a vague plan as to where we would head to, with so many factors like weather affecting the final decisions. Probably fair to say also that some planned places didn’t turn out to be as we had hoped/ expected, yet new places we discovered were fabulous - all made possible by the flexibility of travelling with the van. There are definitely places we discovered this trip which we would return to again - hopefully next winter 🤞 

For activity, and in no particular order:-

• La Sierra Espuna in Murcia - a marvellous Natural Park, great for walking and mountain biking. A great campsite at El Berro - just need to make sure we would be there over a weekend as that seems to be the only times in the winter when the bars and restaurants are open.
• Vall de Pop & Vall de Laguar in Alicante - pretty much for the same reasons as above. Just need to maybe plan for this as the fabulous camping at Campbell does get booked up in advance!
• Cabo de Gata Natural Park in Almeria - a stunning area of protected natural coastline, with a hot desert climate.
• Els Ports Natural Park in Catalunya - a stunning mountain range, great for walking.
• Ebro Delta in Catalunya - the huge coastal wetlands and bird havens.

Culinary experiences, and again in no particular order:-

• The wonderful restaurant La Vinya tapes i vins in Vilafames.
• The delicious home cooking at El Moli de Siurana near Figueres.
• Authentic Valencia paella (the BEST according to the women we met) at El Palmar in the Albufera Natural Park just outside of Valencia.

Places which we didn’t manage to get to on this trip, but are definitely on the list for future travel:-

• The Garrotxa Natural Park in northern Catalunya 
• Alcoy area in Alicante

We were so lucky with the weather. Apparently February is usually the coldest month in Spain, but this year was unseasonably warm, with temperatures around 20 degrees for most of the trip - great for us travelling, but a problem for Spain as a whole, where drought conditions are causing significant problems. In fact tanker loads of water are currently being transported from the Valencia to the Barcelona regions! In general we find that Spain has quite a relaxed feel, and people are usually friendly. Sadly we both seem to have forgotten a lot of the Spanish language we learned last year for our travels, and this does impose some limitations to our experiences- so think we have decided to restart our Spanish lessons once again with Alfredo when we return home - if he’ll have us (will have to promise to do our homework this time) 🤣

Have commented on this earlier in the blog, but we were totally amazed at just how many people were actually travelling around in vans, mainly people from other parts of Europe, all with similar motives around escaping harsher climates for a few weeks of the winter 😃 The warmer, dryer weather certainly enabled us to be more active, and we both definitely feel much fitter now at the end of the trip compared to how we felt when we left the Uk a few weeks ago amid torrential rains and freezing temperatures ❄️ Not all our time has been physically active though,  still loads of time for reading, relaxing, and generally not doing a lot 😎 We were chatting about some of our favourite books we’ve read on this trip. Think my favourite was Trespass by Louise Kennedy and Dave’s was Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 😊

Our favourite reads

So back home now, and happy to be so - getting on with our garden renovation and preparing the allotment for this year’s harvest 🤞 And of course thinking about our plans for another trip later in the year 😃

Hasta luego 😃

POSTSCRIPT- been home a week and there was a knock of the door - the contact lens package which was sent to Spain, refused processing by Spanish Customs, has been returned to sender! Unbelievable - but at least I now have the spare lenses 🤣