Leaving Oliva is never easy,
and it was no different this time. As you can see by the weather forecast at
the point we were heading off, it was hard to leave that idyllic, sunny, beachy
lifestyle behind!
Mrs B had suggested that to
make the most of the good weather, we take the route along the Mediterranean
coast and head over the border at La Jonquera into France – a route that we hadn’t
taken heading north for a very long time! And as we were in that memory lane
zone, she also suggested a campsite we had last visited with our girl Lu and
her bestie, Maisie, 24 years ago, in Tamarit, just north of Tarragona.
But first – and we timed our
(slow) departure from Eurocamping to allow it – we thought we’d treat ourselves
to one of our all-time favourite free-camps on the cliffs at Alcossebre, to
stage the journey.
As you might recall if you
are following this trip, we stopped at the campsite in Alcossebre on the way
down for a week or so, and whilst there we had admired the half dozen or so free-campers
we could see each day, perched above the beaches not far from the Tropicana
site. And after our sleepless last night there, kept awake by campsite aircon, what
better than parking up right on the beach with the sound of the sea lapping the shore and lulling us off into a gentle, compensatory night’s slumber?
Well, let’s just say that
Mrs B’s observation that the sea seemed higher up the beach than when we were
here last, was not only accurate, but based on the fact that we were arriving
on the tail end of a storm surge on this part of the coast that had washed away
a fair bit of beach, some of the cliffs, and flooded some of the roadways…
But, none of that put us off
and before long we had parked up in an idyllic spot…
…got ourselves ready for a
moonlit dinner…
… and before long we had
settled in, with the waves lapping…
…err, hold that thought,
more like roaring at the beach
(according to Mr B that is!)
And, as we had chosen our
spot on a small headland, they were ‘roaring’ onto the beach either side of
where we had parked. The effect of which (for Mr B only…) was that what was
once a gentle lapping and lulling had turned into a discordant slapping as the
waves pounded the beach…
All of which meant, that by
dawn, Mrs B woke refreshed by a good night’s sleep, and Mr B was wandering
about muttering that his masterclass in CIA interrogation techniques had left
him just a little tired…
…which is why he ended up wearing
sunnies for breakfast, when the sun had barely crested the horizon!
Heading out of Alcossebre
after filling up with fuel for Evie and us, we headed north on the old N340,
now quiet since the AP7 motorway became free to use, before joining the
motorway at Ampolla and passing the nuclear power station just by the motorway
near Tarragona…
…and arriving at the site at
Tamarit that we had last visited in 1999, after a relatively easy drive.
We had left Oliva with
enough time to arrive in Tamarit on the Thursday before the Halloween weekend,
having learned the hard way in Conil last year when we struggled to find a site
with any vacancies. So we knew that it was going to be busy…
…but we hadn’t expected to
see all the arrival bays full of campervans waiting to get in (it’s now a much
larger and very popular site!). Once we had waited our turn in the queue to
talk to one of the busy receptionists, taken in the signs promoting three separate
Halloween events at the site on October, including the weekend coming, and
noticed the ghoulish decorations outside reception, we were pleased to be told
that yes, we could stay for the two nights we wanted, but…
…no ACSI discount on the
second night – eek! This was a surprise to us as sites normally list their
exclusion dates on the ACSI app and in the book, which this one hadn’t, so the
difference was €23 for Thursday with ACSI, and €41 for Friday and, as it’s
Catalunya, taxes on top, just like neighbouring France! So, we thought we’d see
how the Thursday night went and review on the Friday morning…
Parking up in our allocated
spot, along with a good number of early arrival Spanish Halloweeners, we
couldn’t help but wander around the site for old time’s sake (we have some very
fond memories, as well as being both flooded and robbed, on two separate
visits, back in the 90s!) and blimey has it changed! It is now so much bigger,
and we could soon see why it’s now called a ‘resort village’!
It still has the lovely tall
pines, but the area where we had camped with the girls (when their tent got
flooded) is now a complex of rental chalets with a wellness centre and bike
rental.
The charm is still there though
and the flood management so much more sophisticated with concrete roads,
massive drains, and a battery of pumps ready to send floodwaters on towards the
sea.
So after our orientation
wander, and getting lost a couple of times, we had to go for a beach walk up
the coast to Altafulla beach. The clouds may have filled in, but it’s still a very
picturesque beach and walk…
Further evidence of the
recent storm surge could be seen as we approached the town, with giant sandbags
outside a restaurant to protect its underbuild, and this precarious life-guard
tower left casually leaning out to sea…
Making our way back along
the beach after admiring some of the older beach front properties…
…we decided to have an early
dinner on the pitch and then a wander around to see how the site was filling up…
Suffice to say that we now
appreciate just how well behaved the weekenders are at Eurocamping in Oliva, as the
night got louder and louder in the zone we were in, with no-one minded to keep
quiet after midnight, or indeed at all until they were ready to turn in some
time before dawn…
So no surprises that when we
did eventually prise our eyelids open next morning, Mr B scampered off to see
if we could change pitch to one of the quieter areas we had reconnoitred the
night before; after all, if we were paying more, surely we would have some
choice…
Well, up to a point. Mr B
returned with our options – two pitches only, with the rest that were at that
price point already booked! Within minutes we had made our choice and by mid
morning we had settled into our very much nicer, larger and hopefully quieter
pitch, closer to the beach and further from the noise ‘hotspots’. We also think
it’s close to where we got robbed, but that was in Daisy when we used to sleep
with the back doors open and just a mosquito net between us and the
knife-wielding ladrones, who slashed the net and stole Mrs B’s watch from right
beside our sleeping heads… Needless to say, no more open door sleeping these
days!
And as if to celebrate our
good fortune with the new pitch, the sun then blessed us with its presence for
the rest of the day, tempting us into the new and much, much larger pool…
… but with our waterslide
days firmly behind us, we reverted to a day of the usual, reading and snoozing on
the beach, with its amazing old castle at one end…
or walking along it and up
into the old town for a wander around.
The old town is typical of
so many in coastal Spain, with its narrow streets and old (mainly 18C here)
houses superseded by a more modern beach resort on the coast itself. So it has
plenty of charm…
a castle…
and, a definite to visit
if/when we come back; a very nice looking Michelin starred hotel/restaurant
that Mrs B had soon spotted…
Returning along the beach,
with the sun setting appropriately on what was our last day on the beach in
Spain…
…we arrived back just in
time for the first of the evening’s entertainments, a children’s dance-along disco
with roasted chestnuts for sale…
After watching for a while,
and before Mr B was tempted to join in, we headed back to Evie where we enjoyed
a much calmer-than-last-night dinner on the pitch, reflecting that for our
entire time in Spain on this trip, we had not needed to eat inside the van
once, with our alfresco breakfast, lunch and dinners reminding us of one of the
things we love so much about our travels – being outdoors as much as possible!
By about 9pm the camp had
gone eerily quiet, of course, it was suppertime for the locals. So we used the
hiatus to wander around and have a look at the Halloween displays that almost
all the Spanish campers had erected on their pitches, with this one being our
favourite…
The second instalment of the
entertainment – a live band – kicked off at 1030 for an hour or so and, unlike
the previous night, and partly because we were in an entirely different part of
the site, by midnight we were able to settle down and, in our now heavily
clichéd world, were serenaded to sleep by the waves crashing on the beach in
the distance….
After a restful night, we
made, for us, a timely departure, helped along by an early morning wake-up playlist
of the theme tune to Pan’s Labyrinth on repeat over breakfast (more onsite
entertainment with an actual labyrinth set up amongst the trees – they really
go all-out with Halloween here!) and, after a final stock up at a Spanish
supermarket we were back on the AP7 heading for the French border, destination
tbd!
So it’s ¡Hasta luego España!
And thanks for an amazing time and such incredible weather! We have an inkling
of what we are returning to in the UK, but first, we need to manage our return
across France, not wanting to leave the sunny south too soon, and not wanting
to have to race to the coast to get the ferry in Dieppe…
S&J 31.10.23