Week 2 - Sunday 29th November to Saturday 5th December
The Crossing.
Sunday.
I had insisted we would move down to PORTSMOUTH a couple of days before the ferry booking as, at this time of year, a very windy day could make it difficult or dangerous to tow the caravan so a few spare days would give peace of mind.
Moving day dawned still but grey and after getting the windscreen replaced we set off in weak watery sunshine that several times turned into extremely strong wet rain that certainly tested the integrity of the windscreen sealing method. Two nights were spent at DIBLES TOURING AND RESIDENTIAL SITE allowing us a couple of days to do last minute shopping. Sadly there was no time to see the sights - still next time!!
On the day of the crossing the BBC were forecasting high winds throughout the UK, in the Portsmouth area and a Met Office "Yellow Warning" was in force, predicting high winds with gusts up to 70 mph. On the Beaufort Scale thats “Force 11 - Violent Storm, Exceptionally high waves. Very large patches of foam, driven before the wind, cover much of the sea surface. Very large amounts of airborne spray severely reduce visibility”. Great!!
The journey from the site to the port, while only 11 miles was, shall we say “interesting”, and when we arrived at check-in the port lamp standards were waving around quite alarmingly.
As we boarded the PONT AVEN FERRY and went looking for our cabin we noticed the staff in the shop packing all the stock away in boxes, seeing us watching him one chap explained “the captain has said the passage tonight will be very rough so everything must be packed away”. Just what we wanted to hear - not.
I found the video below on t’internet and our passage felt like this looks
but, of course, ours was worse far easier.
When we booked the passage there were no “standard” external cabins left so we booked a “deluxe” cabin which, as we were using someones discount card to get a cheaper passage, did not cost much more (leastways that’s what I told management).
The room (you could hardly call it a cabin) has two beds (not bunks), a sofa, TV and DVD player, huge square window, tea, coffee and drinking chocolate making facilities, fridge with complimentary soft drinks. Complimentary fruit and French macaroons were on the coffee table. The en-suite contained separate toilet and shower rooms and very posh complimentary toiletries.
Monday
Early Morning; yesterdays storm is just a memory, the sea is flat and the sun is shining but it has been announced that last nights weather has caused a one hour delay.
A few minutes after we arrived on board yesterday, a uniformed flunkey knocked on the door and enquired what time we would like complimentary continental breakfasts delivered to our cabin and would we prefer tea or coffee with it - we had no idea that breakfast was included, and then, later, discovered that for a £2.20 supplement we could forgo the continental in our room and have a full breakfast in the restaurant. Sue does not eat breakfast on boats but after we had been given and I had eaten both continental breakfasts, I went to the restaurant and for that £2.20 supplement had a four course restaurant brekky as well - fabulous. Being so impressed with the cabin and all it provided I got out the invoice to see exactly how much we had paid for it. The cost of the cabin was a full third of the total passage cost of £600.00 so very expensive compared to an inside standard cabin of around £80.00 - wow. Would we have one again? Without doubt, it was worth every penny.
We were one of the first vehicles off the ferry and, despite getting caught trying to escape with one of the boat’s vehicle chocks jammed under the van which required me reversing back on the ferry and a small agile deckhand crawling under the caravan to retrieve it, we were on the road less than 30 minutes after docking.
When you are exiting a busy Spanish port into a busy Spanish town trying to find the right road to the particular part of Spain you wish to go and the guy in front is (you know ‘cos you had a chat with him over breakfast) going to the same place you are, try to resist following that chap. The guy behind us followed us down all sorts of weird roads when I misread the navigator. Ha! That’l teach him.
Once we found the right road a very easy two and a half hours took us to our night stop CAMPING FUENTES BLANCOS, BURGOS.
Tuesday
Our first morning in Spain and, goodness gracious, was it cold. We have very little electricity here, less than 6amps (16 amps is standard in UK), there is a power post either side of us so on arrival, we checked the first post, of the four outlets two were showing an earth fault the other two were OK. Unfortunately within a very few minutes we had “popped” the inaccessible RCD’s on both. We tried the other post, one outlet was being used and of the other three two were showing earth faults fortunately the fourth was OK. We now knew that we could use only 1kw setting on the heating without popping the RCD and with just one half empty gas bottle on board, gas heating was not an option. We managed to get the temperature in the van up to 15.5 degrees during the evening (not quite so bad for me as I went down the pub) with the heating on as high as 1kw would allow. Leaving the heating on all night, the temperature in the van still dropped to 12 degrees by morning and the fresh water froze so when I washed my hands after having a tiddle in the middle of the night the water pump could not pump ice but spent the rest of the night trying. When we dragged ourselves out of bed at 8:15am the world outside was a frosty white and the outside temperature measured a chilly MINUS 5 degrees. Welcome to clear sky Spain!!
By the time we were ready for the road we were frozen to the core, the temperature did not rise above zero until we had moved several hundred kilometres further south where at mid afternoon it was 14 degrees with another couple of hundred kilometres southwards tomorrow and being nearer sea level we hope it will be higher still. Most of today was spent over 800 metres above sea level with a maximum of 1194 metres (3917 ft) and Mount Snowdon is 1085 metres (3,560 ft) and I bet it’s cold at the top of that in December.
Wednesday
We stayed last night at CAMPING MONFRAGÜE within the PARQUE NACIONAL DE MONFRAGÜE. It is still rather chilly but nothing like the first night. This is a very pleasant fruit (mainly cherry) growing area with lots to see and do and where we hope, at some point in the spring, to spend more time. The campsite runs bird-spotting tours in the national park that we are told are very worthwhile attending but last time we were here they told us it was too hot, this time too cold.
Thursday - Saturday
After four days travelling we have reached our slowdown point - CAMPING ALENTAJO, regular readers will know this is one of our favourite Portuguese camp sites. We are staying here for a four nights before travelling to the western Algarve.
This travelling malarkey is turning out to be quite a small world. When we arrived there were three couples on site that we had met in various places in previous adventures.