July 2021
Spain
Our 2021 main adventure was 6 weeks in Spain. In the Covid era they really welcomed UK visitors and the combination of amazing nature, history, cities and towns, beaches, great motorhome facilities, nice food and the friendly people made our trip a fantastic experience and something we can thoroughly recommend
Our route through Spain - circa 4000 miles (7000 km)
After arriving in Santander (Ferry from Portsmouth) we briefly stayed at the Cantabrian coast and then headed inland to the Rioja region. From the Rioja we entered Navarre and traveled towards the Pyrenees. We visited the Navarre Pyrenees, the Aragon Pyrenees (Ordesa National Park) and the Catalonian Pyrenees (Aiguestortes National Park). After a quick stop in Cordona, Talamanca and Montserrat, we visited Barcelona. We then travelled South alongside the Med coast towards Andalusia. We stopped in the Ebro delta, Peniscola, Sagunto, Xabia, Cartagena and San Jose (Cabo de Gata NP). In Andalusia we mainly spent time in the Sierra Nevada (both the North and the South side - the Alpajurras) and Granada. We also visited Nerja before we headed to Gibraltar where we explored 'the Rock'. After a nice beach stop in Canos de Meca/La Tarifa where the Spanish take their holidays, we headed to Sevilla. After Sevilla it was back up North via Merida, Caceres and Salamanca towards Galicia. We explored the Galician coast as well as Santiago de Compostela for a few days before heading into the mountains in Parque Natural de Somiedo. After that we headed back to Santander and visited Bilbao from where we took the ferry back to the UK.
Overnight Stays
We used a combination of campsites, motorhome aires, Espana discovery and Park4Night places to stay
We stayed in close to 30 different sites during our Spain trip. We preferred a mix of official campsites where we had electricity and shower/toilet facilities and a mix of other sites to spend the night. Spain has a lot official motorhome aires in villages where 10-30 motorhomes park up for the night and facilities for grey/black/fresh water are offered. We also used the Espana Discovery guide to spend a few nights at restaurants/bodegas/agricultural facilities (in our case olive orchard). And Park4Night was our life line for finding motorhome aires, campsites, laundry points, but also car parks used for overnight stays where the local law enforcement allowed campervans to stay the night.
Full list of campsites we used
Noticeable Food establishments
We had some great food experiences in Spain, although we do mix with (motor) home cooking as well!
During our trip we tried quite a few restaurants in a lot of different areas in Spain. We had some great experiences and some lesser ones as you would expect. We now know the difference between Pintxos (great little snacks) and Tapas (often massive single dishes) and know to be careful with how much to order as specially Tapas dishes can be very large. We found some real gems in terms of restaurants and definitely not the most expensive ones, for example a great restaurant high up in the mountains and another one on the salt planes and a street food restaurant in Canos de Meca on the beach...