North through Spain – Homeward Bound
Having arrived back in Spain later than we expected, we needed to plot a quicker route home than originally planned as we only had 16 days to make it back to Calais. However the weather in Southern Spain was absolutely lovely so we didn’t want to head North just yet.
As we plotted our way North we realised that our route would take us close to Ronda. We had been to Ronda before but we couldn’t resist stopping off and wandering around this beautiful town again. We didn’t want to spend the night so we carried on to the nearby town of Zahara del Sierra.
This is one of the beautiful white towns of Southern Spain perched on a hill overlooking a lake with a castle at the very top of the hill. It’s not very big but it’s a lovely little town to take a walk through and explore the castle.
On the way back down from the castle we couldn’t resist stopping for a couple of beers and some nibbles to celebrate being back in a country where you can freely buy alcohol!
The next day we drove the short distance to Setenil de las Bodegas. This small town is built in a gorge between two basalt overhangs. The buildings are tucked in under the rock overhangs which also cover the two main streets either side of the stream through the middle of town.
We walked through the town and were surprised that the tight streets under the overhangs were open to cars and that the occasional driver braved the twisting road and meandering tourists.
People have been living under these overhangs since neolithic times but it really thrived from the 15th century onwards when it became a centre for wine production. The Phylloxera epidemic of the 1860’s wiped out the vines and the town pivoted to olive oil and almond production.
We moved on from here to the town of Iznajar which is well off the tourist track. It’s a pretty white town on the banks of a big reservoir. The town itself is built on a very steep hill with a church right at the top. It seems in this region every town requires a steep hike to visit !
This was a pleasant stop but virtually everything was shut – including the church at the top of the hill so we carried on driving to our ultimate goal for the day of the Gorafe Desert.
Gorafe is a small desert town which feels like it should be the set for a spaghetti western. It is surrounded by Badlands and we parked up for the night on the top of the canyon walls just outside the entrance to the Gorafe National Park.
The views were spectacular with snowcapped mountains in one direction and the desert like Badlands in the other.
The next day we got out our bikes and explored the canyon rim of the Gorafe park but shied away from heading down into the Badlands themselves. There is a 4×4 only track that does a loop through the Badlands and there is a very clear warning sign that it is illegal to drive it without four wheel drive. We had also heard that it is quite hairy even with 4×4.
After exploring the park we headed down to the almost deserted town to check it out. We did manage to find a bar open which was very welcome as it was quite hot and a cool, thirst quenching drink was much appreciated.
All of this hot weather was making us fancy a swim so after exploring the desert we stayed in the same area but headed to Playa El Negratin which is a beach on the banks of a reservoir at the edge of the Badlands.
It proved to be a great overnight stop where we were all alone and also a great place to go swimming in the clear waters of the reservoir.
The weather in Morocco had been great but most of the inland water isn’t very appealing for swimming and the coast where we went hadn’t tempted us into the water so we were pretty keen for a couple of beach days before heading home.
So after leaving the Gorafe area we drove down to the coast in the Almeria province of Spain. There is a huge beach here, in Palomares, where lots of motorhomers park up on the beach over the winter. By the time we got there a lot of the snowbirds had gone home and it wasn’t very crowded.
It’s a nice beach but it wasn’t really doing it for us so after parking up and spending a few hours we moved a bit further up the coast to Playa de los Cocedores.
Now this was more like it. Although you can’t actually park on the beach here, there is a car park on a bluff above the beach with great views and only a short walk down to the beach itself.
Not only is there one beach but actually two, as the parking is on the neck of a whale tail formation with a well protected family beach and a slightly wilder beach the other side.
To make it better there were two bar/restaurants overlooking one of the beaches. This was perfect and we spent a couple of days here enjoying swimming, sitting on the beach and visiting the bars.
We had one of those Spanish seafood tapas meals where you order way too much, it costs way less than you expect and it tastes absolutely delicious.
I went for snorkel around the headlands of the whale tail from one beach to the other and although a little choppy there was a huge amount of fish life on the ocean side.
Unfortunately we were still on a schedule for a ferry back to the UK so we couldn’t stay here longer – even if we wanted to.
A quite long driving day took us due North and back to Inland Spain as we drove through the city of Cuenca to the La Ciudad Encantada to the North.
This is a Karst landscape where the effects of the elements have eroded the land into weird and wonderful shapes. There is a 3km loop through these shapes which have all been given names such as The Lovers, The Seal and The Bears (Amantes, La Foca and Los Osos).
The area has been used in films such as Conan the Barbarian and the Bond film the World is Not Enough.
To make it a perfect stopover for us they allow overnighting in their car park and the cherry on the top was a visit from a curious little deer.
As we were trying to keep pushing North we carried on from the Cuenca region but quite by accident drove past a waterfall that we half glimpsed from the road. Well I can’t resist a waterfall so we immediately dived into the nearby car park and hiked down to see it.
We were rewarded by the sight of a beautiful waterfall and small canyon that in many places would be a must see attraction. I couldn’t resist clambering down the canyon walls right to the water level to explore.
We were heading towards the town of Albarracin but we happened to drive past another waterfall – Cascada Batida – on the way. So another short hike to this waterfall was in order.
We did eventually make it to Albarracin, which isn’t the easiest place to park in a motorhome, but we managed to find s small parking area (for about 4 cars) 500m past the town and then headed off to hike around the town.
We were well away from the white villages of the south now and Albarracin is a striking and uniform pinkish-red colour due to the plaster on the buildings and the terracotta roofs. The village itself clings to the sandstone cliffs and the top of the ridge it is crowned by a ruined castle.
This is considered one of Spain’s premier heritage villages and it’s a joy to wander about its shaded alleys and streets.
We certainly weren’t going to spend the night in the parking area so after exploring the town we carried on further North to the town of Carinena. We only stopped here because it had a free motorhome Aire and was on our route. It’s not particularly a town with much interest for tourists, however it is these sort of Spanish towns that I tend to really enjoy.
We found a lovely little wine bar and ordered some tapas and wine and proceeded to have a thoroughly enjoyable evening for much less than it would cost in either France or the UK. Just one of the reasons so many people love Spain.
Time was running short, so the next day we drove over a pass in the Pyrenees – through thick fog so we had no views at all – to the picturesque town of Saint Jean de Pied-Port in France (making sure that we had filled our tank with Spain’s cheap diesel before crossing the border).
This is actually the most popular starting point of the Camino del Santiago, so it felt fitting to visit here at the end of our trip having visited Santiago del Compostela near the beginning – what felt like an age ago.
It’s a beautiful little walled town with the castle at the top now a boarding school. We stayed in the small but pretty municipal campsite just across the river from the town only a stones throw from the main street. The people here have Basque heritage and that is clear in the menus of the restaurants and the names of some of the streets.
We really were on the way home now and the next stop was just North of Bordeaux in Blaye. We had heard about a Chateau which allowed motorhomes to park overnight for €12. Not a bargain I hear you say – but that cost included electricity, a free bottle of wine and a wine tasting. It felt very much like a bargain to us.
The wine tasting lasted about two hours and we tried six different wines from the Chateau moving to increasingly more expensive ones. I can say that all of them were very good so of course we treated ourselves to a bottle along with our free one and as the sun was shining we sat outside with a picnic and polished one of them off there and then.
The town itself has a large Vauban fortress right on the estuary of the Gironde river which is fun to explore although not as much fun as the wine tasting! If you are motor-homing through France around the Bordeaux region we would highly recommend a visit to the Chateau Marquis de Vauban.
That was our last fun stop before getting our ferry. We stopped at Asnieres sur Vegre for our last night which is a pretty medieval village but we were really only using it as a staging post before driving to Calais for our crossing the next day.
And that brought us to the end of our first winter trip in the motorhome. It had started in one of the wettest winters that the Iberian peninsula has seen but once we got into Southern Morocco we pretty much had beautiful weather for the rest of the trip (save for a sand storm here and there). It is safe to say that a mix of Morocco and Spain will definitely be in one of our future trips as they are both places that we have fallen in love with.