Monday 28 January 2013

Earlier start, van serviced and a supermarket visit before crossing into Spain. There is (supposed to be) a ferry from Vila Real de San Antonio to Ayamonte, which was the way across the border before the bridge was built and we thought we’d go that way for the experience. However, despite following the signs all we could find was a passenger ferry – and a lot of motorhomes parked up on the quayside! No matter, the bridge is only a couple of kilometres away and there is no toll so we went that way instead.

This put us onto the autovia and despite our intention of avoiding motorways we used them for the rest of the days’ journey, after a side trip onto the ordinary roads, whilst very interesting, took us ages and some way off our track. With quite a way to go and also losing an hour with the time difference (still can’t understand why Portugal is in a different time zone) we realised, as we did a couple of days ago, that we didn’t have much time to spare if we were to get to our planned destination at a reasonable time.

The books showed a dearth of sites and Aires in this corner of Spain so we had picked out an ACSI site at El Puerto de Santa Maria which had a couple of good write-ups. Also it was a short ferry ride across the bay to Cadiz which would give us the option of a “bit o’ kulcha”.

So with the sun shining brightly we pressed on to find a most attractive campsite that was quite full, mostly it seemed with folks staying long-term. Apparently there was an excellent discount for stays of over a month. Parked in amongst a group of fellow Brits, we were made most welcome.

A short stroll later as the sun went down showed the surroundings to be beautiful and we felt we had finally found what we had set out for.