The Devall Travel Blog

Some changes to the trip.

Gone are Hurn and Moreton on Marsh. I cancelled them in good time so that the pitches would be available to other members. It's a club suggestion rather than a rule. In the past members have waited until the last minute before cancelling.

The CAMC have changed the booking site and that is due online at any moment. This will take a deposit for bookings. I guess this is to stop the (alleged!) pitch-blockers that book multiple sites for the same dates and depending how they feel cancel and go to one, or none!

What has been added is a three night stay on the Isle of Wight.

There was an offer from Red Funnel of a ferry crossing for a motorhome and three nights at a site for £105. We've not been "abroad" there before as a couple.

I did go on the hovercraft from Southsea many years ago. We had about an hour in Ryde and then we went back! The hovercraft and the funfair at Southsea were the highlights.... And Claire went on a yachting trip years ago too.

I checked out the sites in the package and most pitches available seemed to be only grass. October and UK weather combined don't make me feel confident about grass and Suki!!

So I chose Waverley Park. Hardstanding with leccy hook-up. It's a little more expensive at £128 all-in, but includes the ferry crossings. As we have to drive from Glastonbury, I have booked a ferry for 3pm on the first day, and 1pm on the way back. Both give us time to wander and drive before we have to be there.

It's all confirmed and booked. The site is on the edge of East Cowes and walking distance to Osborne House and the town for the fleshpots and shops.

Now to check the GPS locations and enter it all into Ohrex.

So just six days to go before the week away. I need to do my volunteering at Kent Greyhound Rescue in the morning before we set off. I should be home before about 11am and as long as we have the van packed the afternoon before we should be okay.

Planning ahead!

Might as well get on with our lives. The economic crises that have hit the UK and Europe, along with the threat from Putin that he will take the nuclear option to get out of the mess in the Ukraine, means that we might not be able to afford any trips in 2023 or even be here to have one!

So where to go?

I like the idea of getting across in the van and then deciding where to go! North or East towards Holland and Germany? Or further north to Denmark? I have always wanted to drive to Norway! Or Sweden?

We have been to Norway on a couple of cruise holidays and I rode across Sweden from Gothenburg to Stockholm back in the late 80's on my way to the FIM Rally in Finland. A summer trip might be a bit too much of mosquito heaven for me!

Or south into Germany and Bavaria..... maybe even Austria?

At a quick glance at booking sites and it looks like Germany is expensive for campsites. They have a national grid of Aires that are either free or low cost. I will investigate more later.

I have been Googling and found a few sites to look at:

Weekend Warriors
Our Tour

The Slaws (mentioned before) that we follow on YouTube did the Romantic Road from Würzburg to Füssen this year and have been posting their trip. Claire and I did a lot of the Road in the 207CC back in 2011 and I did a chunk of it from Füssen to Rothenburg ob der Tauber this May.

Bavaria does look full of nice little towns that didn't suffer during WW2! So maybe I'll look at that as a destination.

As long as we can get fuel and haven't been included in the mutually assured destruction by some maniac, then we can travel and enjoy life!!!!

A job for today was to get the AHC organised for Reggie to come on the trip. I had a look on the Abbeywell site and saw that it is pretty straightforward.

You need to send them a copy of pages 1 and 4 of the previous AHC and as long as nothing has changed, it hasn't, the repeat AHC will be £69.

I did add a note to the the email this all goes in to say that page 4 wasn't filled in correctly by the Abbeville vet as they hadn't a clue how to do it. They were used to the EU Pet passport and the French Government didn't seem to be helping much with guidance on the internet.

Over the last few weeks as we have moved further and further into September the weather has certainly turned. Hardly the time to be sitting in a motorhome on a campsite in England! But it is what it is.

A motorhome is a large investment. For us it's the single largest purchase apart from the house! As such we have been trying to get out and about as much as possible since April when we picked Suki up from the dealers in Rye. We haven't done too bad.

As long as we have an electrical hookup on a site then we can have the Whale heater running on the leccy. Failing that we can try it on the gas! We have two large LPG tanks that we have hardly used at since they were fitted and we later filled in Dover!

What we will need to pack is more winter clothes! Waterproofs and walking boots! Plus all of Reggie's wet weather accessories, his coats and towels to keep him warm and dry. Maybe this time take what we need and not bring stuff back unworn!!!!

It's just over two weeks until we set off. We need to get the van from storage at the weekend and start to see about an outside clean. Getting onto the roof is a major operation and I need to clean the solar panels. I imagine they cleaned them before we bought it, but up there, no one can see without a large ladder.

There is a truck wash up at Lympne where Claire worked for many years at Laser Transport. Maybe we need to go up there next week and see if they can do it.

After a week in the timeshare in Alcocéber we need to think about the drive home. We actually have 9 overnights to cover around 1100 miles. Whilst I'd like to consider the Somport and the A10 way home I am thinking that this might be a risk with the weather across the Pyrenees. Plus, I did it a fortnight ago in reverse on the bike!

What does seem more sensible would be to cross from Spain into France on the Basque coast at Irun. And then follow the non-toll route towards Bordeaux. The area south of the Gironde has been marred in the summer with terrible forest fires leading to major evacuations of the locals as well as holidaymakers. Temperatures had reached into the 40°s and the heat and dry conditions caused flash fires. By early to mid-December this shouldn't be a problem!

So where to go after Alcocéber? I am thinking that we head a little to the south before turning northwards through the centre of Spain to that border crossing with France. Reserving four overnights to get to Calais. One stop en-route to get Reggie's worming pill done. I have an overlay to Google maps that shows vets that can do the job. I will be emailing a few of them along the route once I have a rough plan.

Reggie needs to have the worming done between 120 and 24 hours before we hit the Port of Dover and disembark. I guess I could work it so that we arrive in Sarlat where he has been wormed before, in his old EU pet passport, in good time to get the job done. The return sailing is 1435 CET on a Monday!

So after we leave Playa Romana in Alcocéber I have booked two nights at a camping ground called Km Zero Camper Park in a place called L'Alqueria de la Comtessa to the south of Valencia near Gandia. It gets good reviews and with electricity hook-up it's €34 for the stay. It's dog friendly. I have emailed them to check what is open on site in the off-season. As long as we have electricity we are pretty much okay. We should have plenty of LPG onboard to cook etc. I am hoping that we won't need heating!!!! According to Pitchup there are supermarkets nearby.

So 7 more overnights to plan!

It looks as though Pitchup doesn't have many options for the drive up to Pamplona so it looks as though we will have to rely on the various apps that are available on the Android platform.

Google maps with the no-toll option shows that from Km Zero to Pamplona is around 336 miles. Given the back roads that will take all day and we don't want to be spending all day in the van. Adding Calais port into the equation it comes out at 1046 miles. Gulp.

On CamperContact I can see there are plenty of aires that are free. Some get really good write ups for safety etc. I am looking at Cella in Aragon. It's 156 miles from the KM Zero and we should get there in good time. An alternative is in Teruel. The camper site is opposite the Guardia HQ. Might be safe then.

So more work to do.

I have jus returned from Spain after a visit by motorcycle to the Aragon MotoGP. The route we took down was via the N10 non-toll route via Tours/Poitiers and Bordeaux. Crossing the Pyrenees by the Col de la Somport. Most of that looks do-able in a motorhome.

The return route was via the N20/A20/N20 route from Lleida crossing the border into France and heading for Toulouse and then up the non-toll route via Cahors/Limoges/Orleans and then to Chartres/Rouen and Abbeville back to Calais.

That is also very scenic and do-able in a motorhome. The route through the Pyrenees on the N230 in Spain accommodates HGV's and so a Moho would be no problem at all.

I have a friend and old workmate that has moved from northern France to the South in recent years and he has suggested that the N20/A20 route is the way he travels to and from Calais. I need to find where he lives so we can drop in. Nearer the time i might see if he has a vet locally that can issue an EU pet passport for Reggie!

This means that the planned route from earlier just needs a little tweaking. I had hoped to stay at Argèles sur Mer. Claire and I stayed a few nights in a hotel there a while ago when we went in the C3. Many years ago we camped nearby for a week in the summer. But, looking at the Camping-Car app doesn't fill me with any confidence about the aire. From Google maps it looks like an ordinary car-park! The "satellite" version of the map shows loads of cars and not many vans or Mohos.

I have looked for an alternative and the aire at Laroque-des-Albères looks good and is near enough to the town to walk in and get to the shops and maybe a bar for food and definitely a drink. So only one change to the plan.

We have been watching some vlogs of a couple called "The Slaws" on YouTube. They seem to go everywhere and are quite good (and humorous) in the vlogs of their trips. I doubt we'll be in that league...... although Claire has bought a selfie-stick!!

The revised overnights are probably going to be:

- Evreux
- Chaillac
- Caussade
- Laroque-des-Albères
- Blanes

So that's the latest situation. I will start to look at the return from Alcocéber soon. It's a little under two months before we set off for Dover and the P&O Ferries crossing to Calais.

I emailed P&O to ask about the pet check-in. At Eurotunnel there is a separate check where his paperwork and chip are checked. At Dover he stays in the car.... We shall see!!

The Ohrex seems to think that the best route down is to go right down the centre of France. The only problem with that is that there seems to be a rabbit hole of aires and places to stop overnight on the non-toll route. Whichever route we take we still need to have four nights in France.

So I have decided to revive my own plan to go down the A20/N20 route towards Toulouse. The first and fourth overnight are unchanged but I have changed the middle ones to make the distances to travel shorter each day. I am looking to travel around 175 miles or so each day between

The revised overnights are probably going to be:

- Evreux
- Chaillac
- Caussade
- Alenya

The overnight at Camping Blanes is booked for the last night on the road before we arrive at the timeshare. The day will mostly be on the AP-7 (which is now toll free) and looks to be about 200 miles. we can't check in until 4pm so I guess we have all day.

Maybe a quick pass through Malgrat de Mar where we went on our first ever holiday to Spain in the late 60's. It was after my grandad Charlie had died and we went as a family with my "nanny" Lily and Aunt Yvonne, as well as mum and dad and Neill. I had to google to see if the Hotel Planamar is still there.... and it is. Although it looks a bit different to the one we stayed in!

I need to get onto the way back soon. We have 9 overnights between the timeshare and the ferry and so there is scope to go deeper down the Med and then turn for home.

What started as a few days away for our wedding anniversary has expanded a little! Until Covid came along to ruin people's lives, and travel became impossible in the face of a global pandemic, we always managed to get away for this event!

Most often to Spain to use a week in the the timeshare and once (or was it twice?) to the US. All these times we either had a dog free life or Reggie went in to the kennels. With covid meaning vulnerable people like me had to work from home meant that Reggie got used to me bing at home all the time. Claire retired a few weeks before the UK locked down! He still follows us around the house two and a half years since lock down started for me on March 12th 2020!

Anyway, I digress.

I have added yet another night to the trip. I was looking for a site to break up the journey back from the Severn coast in Somerset and perhaps that wasn't too far away from a village or town. Having learned a valuable lesson in France not to plan days that were basically too far to drive in the Van, I was looking at much shorter days. So Moreton in the Marsh jumped out at me. The site is quite near the town centre and there is an off road walk from there to the shops and pubs etc. With Reggie not being good on roads, avoiding the A44 that runs right past the front of the site seems like a good idea.

What's next?

I spent a few hours over the bank holiday looking at the route to take from Calais to Alcocebre.

I used the Ohrex to plan a non-toll journey from the channel to the resort in Spain. It seems to be taking the A20/N20 from around Orleans to Toulouse.

As we have 5 nights on the way south before the check in at the resort I have been looking on the Camping Car Parking app for places to overnight. The aires have electric hook-up points (EHU) and I have been looking at those where it seems to have an equal ratio of EHU to pitches! With so many people getting away in the winter I'd rather be guaranteed a hook-up! We do have the LPG gas for cooking and heating. The van can also run the water heater and the ducted air heating from the EHU as well.

As for the cost. The aires I have looked at are generally about €10 to €11 per night. The plus factor on top of the cost is that most look to be open all year. It seems that many French campsites shut up for the year in October! Even on the Mediterranean coast!

The aires I have selected so far involve a few longer days at the start of the trip. Currently I have stops at:

• Evreux in Normandy
• Saint-Pardoux
• Castelnaudary
• Alenya

As a compromise to the aire in Alenya I am also looking at a few campsites in the area. There are actually a few open! I have emailed a couple that look okay and that get good reviews to see what is open onsite and nearby when we are in the area.

That leaves one overnight and I didn't like the aires on offer on the apps in Spain and so I resorted to pitchup.com. I plumped for a campsite near Blanes. It gets good reviews both on Pitchup and even from the unpredictable Tripadvisor!

I have emailed them to find out what is open when we are there. Sadly the restaurant is closed, so is the pool, but I reckon we can do without either of them in late November. As long as we can walk along the promenade to the town and get something to eat and drink, then we will be fine.

Another route idea I have been looking at is on the MMM website where they suggest going to Irun and then using Pamplona as the jump off point in Spain - https://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/motorhomes/articles/travel/the-long-road-south-a-winter-route-to-the-spanish-costas-in-your

Next job will be to have a look on the return journey. We have 9 overnights. And again we need to get Reggie's AHC stamped and his worm pill done.

Just over two weeks to go to start of the trip to Aragon for the MotoGP round there. This is one of the blogs that I have decided to keep going on Blogger as it isn't really a family trip.

https://invictamoto-aragon-2022.blogspot.com/

Day 2.

The weather was so-so today. A mixture of sunny (and hot) and cloudy and very muggy.

We decided to have a lazy day and apart from a few dog walks to the site's dog walking area, where Reggie could run about off the lead, we didn't do much other than read and try and find the shade.

If it wasn't for the Kindle I don't know where we would be. We had downloaded some stuff from Amazon prime onto the MS Surface tablets we take with us so we could watch offline but we only had one set of headphones! Claire watched one of her programmes and I read my Kindle.

The evening came really quickly and the sunset was rapid. I took.a photo...

Overnight 2.

The rain started to batter us about 3.30am. Then came the lightning and thunder. Reggie was up barking and whining and we had to try and keep him calm with his rubber Kong bone. It works a little.

It was gone 5.30am by the time we got some sleep. The rain continued though.

We decided as we were leaving anyway to pack up and go asap.

Day3.

After the terrible night of the thunderstorms we decided that a trip to Arundel and finding somewhere to park was off the table.

We tidied everything away and had breakfast. I took Reggie for a walk along to the dog walking area. As we were alone I let him off to run about and do his business etc. It was still drizzling.

Instead, I set the satnav for home and let it choose the quickest way. That was to take the motorways M23/M25/M26/M20. It was about 15 miles longer than the coast route we came on and even with a coffee and widdle stop (for us and Reggie) it was about half the time of the coast road!

The stop was on the M25 at Clacket Lane services. These are okay but anyone that puts fuel in here really needs their brains removed and cleaned and then replaced! Diesel today was 195.9 per litre. They had run out on the consumer side and only the HGV pumps were active. There seemed to be a lot of trucks queued to use the pumps!

A stop here for about 25 minutes gave time for Claire to get to Costa for coffee and an naughty but nice "millionaire's slice" (each!!) and for Reggie to have a widdle and a drink. Then back on the road. I upped the pace from the cruise-control 54mph to an indicated 60 on the M26 and M20. Arriving home about 2.30pm.

It looks as though this area avoided the thunder from last night but the roads were wet! Lucky them.

Now to look to see where we can go next week or the week after Once you have the van you have to use it as much as possible. I'll look for an adults only site though! It's not kids in general but kids out until after dark on cycles and e-bikes and a kind of e-go-cart! Plus at this last site it appears that "pitch etiquette" went out of the window. Not just kids, but adults walking through other pitches and using them as short cuts! Walk around!

Since 1993 I have owned a timeshare week. First jointly with my former partner and when we split up it reverted to me as I had paid for it. The actual apartment is in Tenerife and the first week in December. Although it's getting on for 30 years we have never actually been to the resort. We have always traded it and gone elsewhere. Most of the time to mainland Spain and more recently to the US, staying in Florida and Arizona.

Since covid and the lockdowns we have been unable to use it to travel and a week we had booked in 2020 had to be cancelled as UK and most of Europe had entered the first lockdown.

To make the trade we are members of RCI Europe. There we "bank" our week and then use it to book elsewhere. It's not free, but even with their charge and the maintenance we pay on our ownership in Tenerife it's often less expansive than booking the same accommodation directly with a resort.

With a dog approaching 12yo and after two years of being at home with work, we can't take him to kennels again. He is so used to us being around 24/7 it would be traumatic for him.

So with plans to be away in the Van for three weeks I looked at RCI to see how many resorts are dog friendly, in Spain or even France for our dates. Answer. Two out of twenty-five. It's quite odd as most places we have been in Spain other visitor have had dogs... Maybe they own and are permanent residents?

To save losing the £181 in exchange fees that have been held in "credit" for over two years us the banked week the expires at the end of 2022, I have booked one of the two.

The choices were Habitat Playa Romano near Castellon, or one near Roquetas de Mar in Almeria. Almeria is a bit too far on this trip. Maybe another year we can go to the south of Spain and maybe Portugal.

The Playa Romano stay is the middle week of the trip. We have five days to get from Calais to Castellon. Google Maps has it at around 900 miles using toll-free routes. That will need careful planning to get across the Pyrenees. It's always easier at both ends (Biscay or Mediterranean) than across the middle. Again it is weather dependent.

Google would have a Pyrenees crossing via the Somport Tunnel. Weather check required!

As usual. Comments and advice welcomed.

We set off around 11am and the satnav chose the A259 route for most of the way. Our first stop was near Pevensey for lunch and a chance for Reggie to get a little exercise.

This was at another former Little Chef that is now a Starbucks. There used to be hundreds of Little Chef restaurants up and down the country and despite being opened by a huge international company, they went bust.

Once on the way again we skirted past the seaside towns of Brighton and Bexhill on the A27, arriving at the campsite at around 3.45pm. We checked in and then set about getting a pitch. The warden told us a few that were available. In the end we chose 53 as it was on a dead-end path so we wouldn't have too many passing cars...

The park is quite nicely laid out. Clean facilities but not all that quiet. The access road is noisy and there seems to be a problem locally that requires ambulances with sirens blaring often during the day.

It's nice to sit and do nothing. Reggie preferring the shade under the van.

We have two nights here and then we go home.

Arundel is nearby and if we can get parked up we can go there on the way home. Parking with a motorhome isn't as simple as with a car .. Arundel does seem to be anti-motorhome with none of the car parks catering for taller vehicles. Their loss. Imagine the money that van owners would spend in shops and cafés?

.I have added another night away on our trip to Somerset for our wedding anniversary. It's at another CAMC site near to Burnham on Sea. The site is Hurn Lane Club Site.

It's a short walk to the sea and one of the longest beaches in Europe. Amazingly, this beach is dog friendly all year round.

I have a rough route planned down from Calais to the Franco-Spanish border. The last trip where we used the toll motorways at the start and then occasionally during the fortnight cost us around £55 in tolls.

We should land in France around 1220pm. So I think we'll realistically only have three to four hours on the road to the first stop. As I mentioned previously I have been looking at "Aires", free to stay "wild camping" sites and also Camping-Car Parks. The latter are bookable in advance and cost around €10 per night. This is primarily because looking at the various camping site booking websites it looks as though the French campsite industry packs up in October! Even many on the Mediterranean are closed up for the winter.

I have joined Camping-Car Parks for a nominal fee and have the membership card. Whether I'll pre-pay with it I haven't decided. Booking looks to be the right solution though. And you can book through the phone app on the same day. Once reserved you are then admitted through the barrier and onto the site. it is supposed to mean that once booked you are guaranteed a pitch! we'll see f the practice matches the theory maybe!

In November the days will be shorter and so fewer hours on the road. Something to think about. The Camping-Car site has the Aires they manage plus a lot of campsites they have taken over. Sadly it seems that these have no facilities after the end of October either! I don't mind not having a shower, but a toilet is pretty much essential!!!

There has been a lot of "discussion" on the Motorhome Fun forum about campsites in France. In the end as far as I can see it is personal choice. On our last trip we stayed in a variety of sites. Some that were pretty sparse and nearer to nature (although with leccy and ablution facilities) and some a bit too much like holiday camps! There is no right answer. Some hate the idea, and some love them.

I understand that many people pay £50000 (and a lot more!) for a motorhome with its included lav and shower. I understand they want to stop somewhere scenic and camp there. Good luck to them. I'd do that if I knew that I wasn't going to have a knock on the door from the local police to bugger off half way through the night. Or a visit from the other side of the law coin.

I also don't want to spend my holiday cheek by jowl in a glorified car-park with my neighbours every utterance or fart sounding as though they were sitting in my van on my settee! I have passed aires whilst on the bike and thought that it wasn't for me. Vans and caravans squeezed in nice and tight with barely enough room to open the habitation door! Not for me!

So for a first night I think it will be the Camping-Car site near Evreux or the one nearby at St Andre, both to the south of Rouen. Both around €10 a night.

The route down from Calais is made up of a large amount of dual carriageway roads. After the shock (we knew if would be a large-ish cost!) of using the toll motorways on the last trip, we are looking to save a few quid and plan routes that are toll-free. Evreux and St Andre can be booked on the hoof as it were and so can decide once we have hit the beach at Calais.

Where from there? It does depend on where the Camping-Car aires are and whether they are easily accessible. There is one to the north of Limoges at Saint-Pardoux that looks about 250 miles for the day. A lot of it on the D2020 (The old N20) and the A20.

Received wisdom is that the most westerly route so I have had a look along that route as well and Saint-Genis is to the north of Bordeaux.

Ideally if the target is to cross into Spain from the Med then this will need us to cross France to the north of the Pyrenees!