The Biscuit Bunch receives its first visitor!

At the foot of the Sainte Victoire just outside Aix-en-Provence the Biscuit Bunch were very happy to receive its first visitor. We picked up Alison on the 25th March at Marseille Airport and spent 4 very enjoyable days together.

On the first afternoon we went into Aix for a walk around town. Friday night we got on our glad rags and hit Marseille for a night of Ceroc. Saturday was spent relaxing and eating - lots of French bread and patisseries as one simply must when in France.

Sunday we headed back into Aix where we happened on an exciting bicycle race (La Ronde de Provence), as you do in France. Alison then generously treated us to a meal in one of the pavement cafes on the stylish Cour Mirabeau.

Alison quickly adapted to life Chez Biscuit, she had excellent spacial awareness (not an inch to spare inside the caravan) and made a stirling job of mucking in with all that needed doing the moment it needed doing. Krista was very happy to welcome a new face and loved getting to know her honorary auntie.

Thank you for coming Alison and thank you for the gifts. We are glad you got home safely and look forward to seeing you on our return x

Nous sommes en France!

Quick update while using my 15 minutes of free internet! We have arrived in France anf are heading for Aix-en-Provence. I promise lots of photos as soon as we have the time to download them. We are all well and hope you are too. Lots of love The Biscuit Bunch xxxx

Benicassim, Tuesday 8th March – Wednesday 17th March

After Valencia we spent a perfect week in what was for us a perfect town - Benicassim. Against our now very exacting standards we both voted the campsite the best we have stayed in to date – clean, tidy and friendly with good toilet facilities, an indoor pool and a tennis court. The town itself was an old and traditional Spanish seaside resort that ticked all our requirement boxes – a very Spanish feel, everything in walking distance, a long, clean promenade, nice places for coffee, and a brand new indoor municipal swimming pool. So my swimming drought was now definitely over and I had what is more a choice of pools. With the campsite’s a little small, I opted for the gorgeous 25 metre and often empty one in town. Knowing how good swimming is for my mood Graham let me go every day! He in turn answered an ad for a tennis partner on site and played two matches against a fellow camper called Wolfgang. Although they were both good and satisfying games, Wolfgang had the edge on Graham and we had to leave Germany once again up on England. Graham was luckier at the go-kart track and came in first with some very respectable lap times. Although he had plenty of support from Krista and I on the sidelines he cut a lonely figure out on the track all alone … He missed having Graham or Jake to race.

Krista accomplished several firsts in Benicassim. Number 1 was a bath in the main shower blocks where they had special baby bathing facilities, second was a night out dancing to ‘Henrike Duet’ in the campsite bar. Third much to her own and everyone’s delight was her first evening meal out in a highchair at the campsite restaurant. My goodness the Biscuit Bunch know how to live!

Valencia - Saturday 6th March – Tuesday 8th March

Today we made our way up to Valencia and pitched up at a site 6km outside the city. We often find our campsites in the ACSI guide for ‘off-season’ camping. For ₤10 it comes with a card that entitles you to stay at its listed sites for an all inclusive price of 15 Euros. This compared to standard rates of 25 Euros upwards is very reasonable. We have discovered, contrary to what we imagined, that camping is by no means the cheap way of doing things. When you add up the cost of everything necessary for a reasonably comfortable 6 months it would be cheaper to rent an apartment somewhere. However you would not then have the freedom to travel around and get to know more than one place. We are thinking that now knowing the places we have liked more and those less perhaps this would be an option for the future.
The campsite for Valencia was very standard and functional for those like us who wanted to be in a convenient place for the city. We spent two days making the twenty minute journey by bus into the centre and discovering a little of the city. We had purposefully ensured that we were not here during the week of the ‘Fallas’ festival as we felt there would be too many people and too much noise for the baby. However as with so many celebrations nowadays things were revving up well in advance and there was already much related activity going on. During the ‘Fallas’ there are processions, burning effigies, fireworks and thousands of firecrackers being set off in the street. The firecrackers come in all sizes and some sound like bombs going off. We were vary of any being set off too close to Krista but soon found that it was difficult to escape them. But I do think Graham and I were far more affected by them than she seemed to be. Our hardy baby took it all very much in her stride.
In the run up to the festival hundreds of ‘official’ crackers were also being set off every day in the main square at two o’clock. It seemed that the whole of Valencia would flock there to witness the spectacle and deafening explosion of noise this created. We had heard it from a distance on the Sunday so knew on the Monday when we found ourselves wanting to cross the square at 10 minutes to two that we needed to get as far away as possible. This entailed running as fast as we could in that time from the square and against the throng of people hurry to it. We had done the right thing for even ten minutes away the buildings seemed to reverberate from the shock of what must be a lot of money and all the hard work of the set up going up in some very noisy smoke!
When not dodging firecrackers we visited what we found a fairly mediocre modern art museum and the very impressive bright white and sparkling complex of Opera House, Science and Oceanographic Museums. For refreshment after all the walking and running we tested the ‘Horchata’ drink that is a tradition in the region. Sweet and served semi-frozen we found it quite delicious and were pleasantly surprised from its milkyness to find that it is totally non-dairy. It is made simply from crushed monkey-nuts and also delicious in ice-cream form – a recommendation to vegans in particular (Rachel and Steve)!

Beyond La Manga

A quick update of progress as we have poor internet connection and I am unsure of how much I will get to post over the next week or so.

From La Manga we went up to Valencia. We stayed just outside the city and spent two days taking a 30 minute busride into the centre. Absolutely loved Valencia as a city. They were 'warming' up for the annual 'Fallas' so everything had a real buzz about it.

We are now in the gorgeous coastal resort of Benicassim. I at least vote it as my favourite place so far and we have all agreed that the campsite is the best yet. More details to come shortly.

With snow in Barcelona and that route into France currently blocked by all reports we plan to bide our time here until the weather improves. Although it is cold here we have enjoyed two days of unbroken sunshine. We will have definately moved into France by 25th March when we have a rendez-vous with Alison at Marseille airport!

Love to all xxxx

Camping and Caravan Club Rally - La Manga

Saturday 27th February – Saturday 6th March

A text message from England to say that friends of Graham’s brother Pat would be staying on a campsite in La Manga decided us to make this our next stop. This also gave us the opportunity to discover more about what was for us the new phenomenon of a ‘Camping and Caravan Club rally’. By joining a rally members of the club get preferential rates on pitches pre-booked for stretches of several months out of season. Almost as if on a holiday camp you can then opt to join in with the many activities stewards then organize for the rally campers. Many people go for the duration of the rally and do so year in year out, meeting up with friends made and joining in with all activities (visits, quizzes, meals, dances, classes, sports etc.). Others like us just join for a shorter period, benefit from the good rates and join in with some or none of the events on offer.

Finding people if slightly older than us on average, as ever helpful and welcoming, we resolved to get as involved as a 6 month old baby permits. This meant a slightly dodgy yoga class for Annie and a Pictionary type quiz entry for us all. Each team was given the name of a pub which had to be drawn represented in pictures then stuck to the front of the caravan. Over the course of a few days you then had to go round to the other caravans/motor-homes and guess their pub. Graham was chief sketcher; Annie neatened the drawing, while Krista got us an extension on the entry dead-line and charmed the other participants to give us lots of extra clues. Despite these we didn’t manage to win the €8 first prize, but we did get the €3 prize for best drawing!

Pleased with our success, the quiz also gave Graham the perfect opportunity to get a good look through the windows of several motor-homes (see ‘Hymer-envy ‘ as mentioned previously). He also wangled us a visit to another rallier’s Rapido – the French equivalent to the German Hymer. Although we of course love our modest Bailey Ranger Caravan, these things are in another league and we could imagine finding it very comfortable indeed!

We met up with Pat's friend's Bill and Val towards the end of our week when they arrived for some wind-surfing. La Manga is a perfect spot for this and Bill and Val are very good. They were also very good at Rummi-kub as they proved during the enjoyable evening we spent playing with them. We clinked our glasses to Pat and Sue over an extremely good bottle of wine from the local Aldi - a real bargain at 0,89 euros - and all resolved to hurry back there to make a stock before the secret got around the campsite.

Isla la Plana

Tuesday 23rd – Saturday 27th

In good spirits at the thought that Annie would today be breaking her longest ever ‘swim-fast’ in a pool freshly –filled daily with seawater, we jaunted along the coast towards Cartagena. So begin to imagine the Bunch’s disappointment to find on arrival in Isla Plana that the campsite was FULL with people pitched up outside waiting for the next space!???? We couldn’t help going in to check out the afore-mentioned pool area where peoplewere enjoying an aqua aerobics session in the sunny outdoor pool. It looked luscious. Our indignation was compounded by the well-meaning English couple who approached us in the car-park to commiserate with our not being able to get on the ‘best campsite in Spain’. They did help us out by pointing out the ’pool-less’ campsite down the road when we said we didn’t fancy the prospect of waiting an indeterminate length of time for a freed pitch.

We found the ‘overspill’ campsite clean and pleasant despite its lack of any leisure facilities (the other also had a tennis court by the way grrrrrrrrrr). We returned to the original site the next day to check if spaces had become available. When we found the same crowd and more waiting, we resigned ourselves to making the best of where we were and a few more days of prom walking and running.

As sod’s law will have it, here we went on to enjoy the longest and best stretch of fine weather so far and our first proper breakfast al fresco!

Isla La Plana is a small town right by the sea. Towns like this are a sad testimony to how badly Spain is being hit by the recession; particularly it seems when they rely heavily on tourism from the more northerly European countries. Obviously greatly popular over the past 20 to 30 years with the Brits, the weakness of the pound is having a significant impact. Granted we are out of season, but so many shops, cafés and restaurants are permanently boarded up and it is easier to count the apartments not for sale or for rent. I think the Spanish terms ‘se vende’ and ‘se alquila’ will be permanently imprinted on our minds … Most shocking perhaps are the many half-finished, now deserted new apartment developments that leave a lot of places looking sad and ghostly.

Almeria

Monday 22nd – Tuesday 23rd February

As we began the journey that would take us along the coast to Eastern Spain and eventually northwards towards France we spent one night in as campsite just outside Almeria. It was in a very picturesque location snuggled into a bay a literal stone’s throw from the sea. It was lovely to be able to hear the waves from the caravan. However with nothing within walking distance and the promise of heated in- and outdoor pools at our next campsite we decided to stay only one night.

Farewell to Torre del Mar

On Monday the 22nd of February we said goodbye to Torre del Mar after just over a month. We spent our last few days making final visits to what had become our favourite haunts and bidding farewell to some now familiar faces. First was the sullen waitress at Neptuna’s who was finally persuaded to chat and smile by the combination of our frequent visits for the best coffee in town and our ‘guapa’ baby girl. Second were the ever so slightly weather worn but cheery coaches at the municipal tennis court who started to pre-book us into the 12 o’clock spot. Thirdly the slightly frayed-edge band of penquin waiters at ‘Las Yucas’ who were just pipped to the post on their hot coffee by the mouthful of cake always served at Neptuna’s but never beaten on their fantastic tortilla baguettes and efficiency of service.
We were pleased to see Manfred and Karin turn up at our caravan door on our day of departure. They had been our neighbours in Portugal and the ones who had recommended Torre del Mar. It’s a shame that they only arrived as we were leaving. Once again they were stood under an umbrella in the pouring rain, will we ever know what they look like dry? We resolved to visit them in Germany one day to find out.
Krista had made a number of her own friends who were all desperate to take care of her as we got the caravan hitched up – she can converse in at least five languages cooing confidently (in order of fluency) in Italian, German, French, Spanish and a little Dutch. While she had the largest number of Italian friends, her best friend was the German lady opposite. Much to our amusement, with this friend she relished playing the coy ‘Mauschen’, giving many more cuddles and strokes than we ever get!