Tuesday 13th April to Thursday 15th April

Tuesday 13th April

Headed off to the nearest town, Mazarron, to find a library and use the internet. We required more funds putting across to the Nationwide account, we were using while abroad. This account allowed us to withdraw abroad without being charged fees, apart from the exchange rate. This also brought back to light, the fact that soon I would need a cash injection into my savings. The money I had managed to save before we went away was running low. We needed to get out of Spain and for me to look for work in the south of France. We had an address regarding a farm for fruit picking, also I would try looking for work at campsites, bars or other farms.

Before we started our journey out of Spain though we needed to find a motorhome shop and try and get our gas bottle refilled around Alicante. Also my Aunt Sue and her husband Dave live in the area, so we were planning on popping by to say hi. I had sent an email about a week ago informing them we would be in the area. Only problem was now as I logged into my email, the message had been returned unable to be delivered. The address I had was incorrect, so we would have to try and get their telephone number and make an unannounced visit. We couldn’t really just turn up, also the address we had for them our Tom Tom didn’t recognise, so we didn’t exactly know where it was.

We headed for Alicante to find motorhome shops and gas, while waiting for my Mum to contact me back with Sue and Dave’s number. On the way we stopped at a few scrap yards, to see if by any stroke of luck they had a Hymer or motorhome there. If we could get our indicator unit or any other parts from them, this would work out a lot cheaper than buying new. We didn’t have any luck though at the scrap yards or with anywhere to fill our gas bottles. Also all the motorhome shops didn’t have the indicator unit, they would have to order it and it would take a good few weeks. We would keep travelling with the broken one for the present time, we did however manage to get a new roof vent cover.

It was now getting late in the day, but we now had Sue’s telephone number so gave her a ring. We arranged to pop in tomorrow morning for a cup of tea, as they were off out shortly to meet friends. We headed off, after more supermarket shopping (this seems to be a constant process) to find a place for the night. We found an area that was being developed for a new housing estate, which at present had around 15 motorhomes parked up.

][b]Wednesday 14th April[/b

We managed to find Sue’s house, with the help of the GPS co-ordinates. When we arrived we were told that we were the first ones who had found it, even parcel delivery services have trouble. It was a pleasant property surrounded by fencing in a country/suburb area. We had a tour around and Dave proudly informed us of the money and the work he had spent in improving their home, to get it how they liked. We had a good chat over a cuppa and got some lovely calls from my Grandma, Grandpa and Mum, it was good to speak them all. Before we left Sue gave us some of her lemons from one of her trees, they were very nice juicy tasty lemons. Showing home grown food is so much tastier than supermarket stuff. We said our goodbyes and let them get off, as they had some appointments to get to and we wanted to head north to get as far as we could.

It was a long drive of about 250 miles, we managed to get 80km below Barcelona to stop for the night. We found a spot by a harbour with a few other motorhomes, in a town called Sant Carles de la Rapita. We were glad to be leaving Spain, it was expensive and apart from the Granada region didn’t seem as pleasing on the eye as other countries.

[b]Thursday 15th April

Headed off with the aim to be in France by the end of the day. After a long drive, we came upon the last Spanish town on the French border and hit a traffic jam. We sat slowly crawling along, with the border posts in sight, assuming the jam was to do with border control checking vehicles. As we crawled up to the border posts, they were empty and the town in front of us seemed to be some sort of tax free area. The traffic jam was due to the huge amount of people shopping, trying to find parking spaces! After finally getting out the strange town and the traffic, we entered France and onto some Pyrenees mountain roads. After the problems with finding parking spots in Spain, we were looking forward to the French aires (motorhome stops) and the fact that parking was easy and mostly free. As we drove around though we found that the rest of France must of spoiled us. All the aires we had listed in our book, seemed to be no longer in use! After some driving around we found one in a small village below Perpignan and settled down for the night.