Saturday 6th February- Monday 8th February

Saturday 6th February

Headed onto the bridge over the estuary and the border, with the aim of going to Seville and finding a motorhome shop in the process. No sooner had we got onto the bridge we stopped in Traffic. Then spent a good hour, slowly inching across the bridge stuck between Portugal and Spain. When we got to the Spanish side we saw what the problem was, the Spanish Police had created a roadblock and were searching cars. They consisted of a few police vans and some heavily armed Spanish police. We had them ask if we were carrying anyone extra and then they had a quick look in Hymer, before we were allowed through and on with our journey. We then went straight down the motorway to Seville. We had heard Seville was not a safe place to park your motorhome up in, so we would probably have to find our first campsite. Before we did though, we went to check out some motorhome parking Tom had told us about. We found a car park with a parking attendant saying it was €5 for the day, the parking attendant didn’t look too official mind. So we decided against parking up and instead would find a campsite. First we headed to a motorhome shop on the other side of the city, to try and sort out our inverter problem. When we found it they spoke no English, so it was hard to explain our problem. The option there was to buy a new battery at €120 and see if that worked, which would be an expensive way of fault finding! So we decided we would search for another shop. It was then to the task of locating a campsite, we headed to a town south of Seville called Dos Hermanos. But the campground we found was closed and we hadn’t seen any others on the net. Also the tourist office wasn’t answering the phones, so we couldn’t find where any more were. Outside the campsite an older French couple also pulled up to find it closed and didn’t know where else to go. After consulting Tom we found two other campsites, one around the corner and another north but closer to the city. I shared this information with the thankful French couple and we set off first to the campground around the corner. They were open but it was €20 a night, so we decided if we were spending the money we may as well go find the campsite closer to the city. So off we headed following Tom’s directions. Tom led us around and above the city then off down a small road running by the main road. Tom said the campsite was just up here, but all we saw were allotments then the road came to a dead end and a big gate. The gate was an emergency gate for the runway, and although Tom stated we were at the campsite, we knew there was not a campsite here! Just an airport and two airport police vans heading down the runway towards the gate. Probably didn’t help us having two huge kayaks on the roof, they probably thought we looked a bit suspicious! We decided to turn around quickly and go back to the other campsite. It turned out, as we were turning and driving off, the police seemed more interested in some plane spotters with cameras. Arriving back at the campsite the receptionist told us they were the only open campsite in Seville! When we parked up, the French couple that we had informed of the campsite came by to say thank you.

Sunday 7th February

Headed off on the Bus to Seville centre. As soon as we had come into the centre, the bus was heading up a road lined with grand old Spanish stately homes. Seville centre was very pleasing on the eye. The wide boulevards and big decorated houses or the narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter with their tapas bars and squares of orange trees. They are the sorts of streets you could spend all day wondering around. I also got accosted by a woman shoving rosemary into my hand and then blessing me, before asking for money. We had some lunch in a lovely little tapas bar before taking a walk around the park.

Later on we decided to head back to the campsite to utilise there wifi in the bar/reception to investigate and plan the Moroccan tour. After a couple of hours on the internet, trying to find campsites or information about campsites, we had found a few and a book that we should have bought about Motorhoming in Morocco! But it was now too late to order it on net! The French couple that we had also bumped into in Seville a couple of times, came in and he explained in French that they were going to Morocco. They had a list of campsites we could photocopy, which was very helpful and just what we needed. So we learnt a few more places to go from them, before heading back to the motorhome.

Monday 8th February[i]

Left the campsite and headed South, Defiantly want to come back and explore more of Seville for longer next time. On the way out we found another motorhome shop and servicing we had been told about, by the lad I got chatting to at reception at the campsite. At the garage, one of the staff that could speak English checked our Inverter and battery. He explained that we had been putting too much through the inverter and also the inverter was too powerful for the battery! Oooppss, the reason we had bought a 2000watt one so it had been able to power certain items, like the hairdryer. This though had been power hungry and drained our battery! He said a second battery wouldn’t really do the trick and we would be better with a smaller inverter and not using the hairdryer. Also stopping one night every couple of weeks in a campsite to charge the battery off the mains. So we decided on buying a smaller inverter for €70 to charge the laptop and phones, while Lorna resolved herself to the fact that hairdryer use would be a lot fewer and far between. We then got stung for a further €70 labour for him testing and telling us the problem, and that was at a discount. It was expensive, but at least we now knew what the problems had been.

We then set off further south and kept on going till we reached somewhere near Tarifa, just before Algeciras. After a few attempts at finding somewhere to park up, by nightfall we found an old car park that was due for development that motorhomes were parked up at, so we pulled up there.