Adventures in Spain and France 2022
Welcome to my first blog installment of our 2-3 month trip to Spain (and France) in our campervan. I'm with Geoff Sample who records the sounds of birds and wildlife. We have been planning this trip for quite some time and even up to the day we left, couldn't quite believe it was happening.
Tuesday 19th April
2022 Day 1
Left home
later than planned so we hit traffic going around Newcastle but it did give me
chance to say ‘Adios’ to the Angel of the North as we crawled past. On the
journey south we spend a lot of time remembering all the things we have
forgotten to bring / forgotten to do. Stay overnight on a farm in Lincolnshire.
Wednesday
Up early to
set off for Dover. Stop in a service station for coffee and Geoff valiantly
resists a sausage and bacon roll and makes do with half a croissant. (He’s on a
waistline reducing regime in time for our son’s wedding in August). Traffic
running smoothly over the Dartford river crossing (which I really dislike as I
hate heights) so I distract myself by trying to take some film on my phone. All
way along the A2 Geoff is bird spotting, saying “Oooh look there’s a Sparrow
hawk / Kite / Buzzard” and I’m thinking ‘Oooh look there’s a large truck,
please don’t drive into it’. We allow lots of time to get to and through Dover
port as a few days earlier there had been huge delays and tail backs.
Fortunately, everything runs very smoothly. Minimal delays at passport control
then into the queue for Irish ferries.
Spot the van
A swift exit
from Calais port and on to the Autoroute south towards Rouen. Park up overnight
on a service station which, unlike UK service stations, make it welcoming for
people to park up for free and for as long as needed. There was a dedicated van
/ caravan area with trees and picnic tables and it was remarkably quiet.
Thursday
Start the
day with a jolt - a double Expresso in the service station. Admire the displays
that were there and also remind myself of my favourite French word.
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Best French Word ever |
Carry on south, glimpse the magnificent cathedral as we skirt Chartres and decide I need to visit it at some point. During the journey, Geoff’s bird watching from the van includes 4 Montague’s harriers.
Arrive at
our destination of La Brenne, an area we have visited twice before. Stop off at
a small village - Meziers en Brenne to get provisions and are very disappointed
to find that the wonderful Deli we were reminiscing about had closed. That’s a
shame, we thought but small businesses have had a rough time over the last
couple of years. As we walk back, we
find with great excitement that it is now in a different venue, across the
square. Homemade cheese soufflé for me, fancy pate and game pie for Geoff plus
mushrooms a la greque and celeriac remoulade for us both. I love France.
Friday
We stayed the night on a campsite on the edge of the Etang (lake) de Bellebouche. La Brenne is a regional nature park with over 2,000 lakes and ponds. It’s a beautiful location and we spend the day having various lakeside walks. Saw a cockchafer beetle which is very apt as I am currently reading ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ by Rachel Joyce. Also saw coypu in the lake and my first lizard of the trip. Geoff managed to get some fantastic film of singing nightingale and field-crickets. He’s put the film on YouTube if you fancy a look. If you go to Geoff's facebook page - just search Geoffrey Sample and you will see a link.
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Cockchafer beetle - photo by Geoff |
Saturday
Leave La Brenne
to head further south, a long drive through the Dordogne and into Languedoc,
along very winding roads and through a very dramatic thunderstorm. Park up for
the night with a glass of Languedoc wine.
Sunday
Leave early
while it is still dark and make our way along more winding roads to Narbonne
and our first view of the beautiful Mediterranean sea. We visited Narbonne in
1985, not long after we first met and plan to revisit the area later in the
trip. Pretty excited to have made it this far! Get onto the autoroute, pass by Perpignan
and then cross the border into Spain – not that you would know you had crossed
a border – except the autoroute becomes the autopista and I glanced a ‘Welcome
to Spain’ sign.
We arrive at
our first Spanish destination, just over the border - the Aiguamolls de l’Emporda natural park in
the bay of roses. It’s an important wetland area, a location Geoff has been
aware of for a while and somewhere a friend
recently recommended we visit. Drive to the reserve to see what information is
available and to have a look around. As soon as we got out of the van in the car
park we see a Stork’s nest above our heads with a stork on top clapping its beak
really loudly. On our look around we also see very pink Flamingos, lots more
storks and big terrapins. What a lovely place – it’s an oasis along the holiday
Costa.
Go into the
information centre and I try speaking Spanish - I have been attempting to learn
it for a while and I’m really not very good. The assistant very kindly listened
then offered to speak English – she was from the Scottish Borders, not far from
where we live. She suggested a campsite we might like, close to the reserve and
on the beach so we made our way there. It was a rather swish site and I don’t
think I would fancy it in the summer with kids clubs and discos but at this
time of year it was ideal. There was the added bonus of monk parakeets feeding
on the grass next to van. They are a close relation to the ring necked parakeets
found in parks all over London.
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Monk parakeets - photo by Geoff |
Monday
Started the
day with a walk on the beach. Although I live on the magnificent Northumberland
coast, there is something very magical about the glittering Mediterranean sea. Follow
the walk with a few chores – clothes washing and rearranging things. We are
travelling in a smallish van so faffing with where things should be stored is a
regular activity.
After lunch,
go back to the reserve and see lots more birds and a coypu walks up to the
bench we are sitting on. It gets really close, it’s less than a metre away,
then it looks up, sees us, freaks out and dives into the river as fast as it
can and with an almighty splash.
Leave the
reserve to back to the campsite and as we are driving along a track I spot some
amazing looking, big birds in amongst the grape vines. I very excitedly tell
Geoff about the colourful, almost Capercaillie like birds. Really? he asks, but
never the less reverses the van back for a look. They were chickens – albeit colourful
Spanish chickens, but chickens none the less. You would think that after
spending over 30 years with an ornithologist I would have honed my bird
identification skills, but clearly not.
Tuesday
Up at 6am to
get back to the reserve as soon as it opens, for Geoff to record sounds,
photograph and film. For this project, I am given the title of ‘production
assistant’ which sounds quite fancy but basically means I just help carry the
equipment. Wonderful views of storks nesting on telegraph poles, terrapins
enjoying the sun, glossy ibis, which look quite ordinary and brown until the
sun shines on them then they become iridescent and black winged stilts which
have the thinnest legs of any bird I have ever seen - I don’t know how they stand
up. Also go to a different part of the reserve later that day to catch the
evening light, which is glorious.
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Man with equipment |
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Flamingo photo by Geoff |
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Glossy Ibis photo by Geoff |
Wednesday
Decide to go
for an explore of a different area of the natural park, using a basic map
provided by the information centre. Get lost then more lost trying to find a
parking place that’s marked on the map but doesn’t actually exist. During our
being lost we did see an enormous grasshopper, about 6cm long. We think it was
a female egyptian grasshopper that had just arrived from Africa or was it a locust?
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Lost on the campo |
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Grasshopper or Locust? |
Thursday
Leave the
beautiful natural park to go further down the coast to the Delta de l’Ebre
natural park, reportedly one of the best nature reserves in Europe, renowned
for birds, wildlife and also renowned for the ferocity of its mosquitoes. We
get on to the autopista, which is not too busy, just going along nicely until
we start approaching the circumnavigation of Barcelona. It was horrible, so
busy with masses of big trucks thundering along with no distance between them.
I had sweaty palms and I wasn’t even driving. Listened to a podcast as we went along
- ‘Sweet Bobby’. It’s a strange, rather disturbing story about someone who was
drawn into a relationship with a person who had created a false identity. We
were intrigued though and listened to the end.
Once we were
around Barcelona, the traffic calmed down and after a short time we leave the
autopista to the delta. It was not what I expected initially – we just saw
miles and miles of dried out ploughed fields and it felt quite industrial in
parts. Fill up with fuel after some time spent working out how to use the
automatic fuel pumps, which are different to the French automatic fuel pumps
which are different to the UK automatic fuel pumps. Also find a supermarket to stock
up on provisions.
Head for a
campsite we have identified and get really lost. The whole area is just a warren
of small roads/tracks and Spanish road signs leave a little to be desired at
times. We are old school and usually like to rely on a decent map book but we
resorted to Google maps for directions and it was great. Arrive at the site and
tuck into roast almonds and a Spanish beer before a walk to the beach.
Friday
Take some time to explore the area and it is quite amazing. It’s an extensive area surrounding the Ebro river and goes down to the sea. There’s marshes, sand dunes, lagoons all surrounded by rice paddies. These are the dried out fields we saw when we first arrived. They get flooded sometime in May and then rice is planted. I would love to have seen them when they were flooded, although that could have enhanced the mosquito situation, which so far hasn’t been too bad at all.
We go to the main town on the delta – Deltebre –
and the eco museum / information centre. After suggestions from the centre
staff, we go out to an area which has a lovely beach and walkways along the Ebro
river, almost to where it meets the sea and it has some interesting sculptures along the walkway. As we park up we spot a van just like
ours with a UK sticker on the back - we have seen hardly any UK vans so far on
our travels. Get chatting to the owners and they are from a part of Scotland we
know well and he and Geoff have colleagues in common. It was lovely. We exchange
contact details and carry on exploring.
Sculptures
Saturday
Walk around various
parts of the reserve and I go off for a little wander on my own and hear some
incredible sounds. Try to record them on my phone but as soon as I press record
they go quiet. I then see a Purple gallinule up close. It’s very spectacular
with bright red legs like he/she has just put on Christmas tights. Turns out the
sounds I heard were from them.
Later that
afternoon, we go back to Deltebre to check out where we are going to park up for
the night. There is a lovely bridge going over the river into the town and just
as we get over the bridge we hit chaos. There is a competitive running event on
and almost all roads are closed, including the road to get us back over the
bridge. It then becomes a thing of nightmares where every road we try to go
down is blocked. Eventually find a way through and take a big detour further up
the river to another bridge where we can cross back.
Sunday
Out on the delta at 5.30am for Geoff to record sights and sounds as dawn breaks. It’s very ethereal with a lovely light.
There have
certainly been more people around over the last few days than we expected, then
we discover that the Spainish celebrate May day and it is a holiday weekend.
The bar opposite the site is definitely embracing the holiday spirit and
playing music through loud speakers. Things quieten down fairly quickly though and
we have an uneventful night.
Monday
We were planning to leave the delta and head inland to the mountains as the weather forecast was for rain (up until now it has been pretty warm and sunny) but the weather wasn’t as bad as we had expected so decide to stay another day to explore an area we hadn’t yet visited. It is quite remote and we get a bit lost as there are different road closures but make it eventually. We were both very excited to see the nest of a Penduline tit (yes, I did have a childish chuckle to myself when I was told that is what it is called). It has that name as it builds a nest that hangs from branches and when it is being built it looks like a small shopping bag. We also saw the bird, which is very bonny.
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Delta look out tower |
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No Hunting |
Decide to return
to the campsite we stayed at on Thursday and Friday nights as the one last
night was a bit too weird to revisit. As we head there we are aware that the
road to the site is being repaired which is definitely needed as there are enormous
pot holes and ditches on the side of the road. We turn into the road and Geoff
jokingly comments that it might be closed for the repair work, given our road
closure experiences over the last few days and, yes, it was. Had to reverse, go
back the way we came and find other back roads to get to our destination. When
I say roads here, I am referring to small tracks but we get there eventually.
In general
we are happy to spend some time wild camping but camping isn’t allowed anywhere
in the national park which I think is fair enough. The delta is an amazing
place where the needs of visitors, local community and maintenance of the
fragile ecology all have to be balanced out.
We are leaving
the delta tomorrow to go inland, into the mountains so lets see what happens next!
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