Monday 25 October 2010
Leaving Sitges we continued our way south; we started on a motorway, the A7, which by-passed Tarragona but it soon became a toll road so the satnav directed us to the N340. The N340 is the ‘free’ road that runs right down the coast and round to Cadiz, we will be following it all the way over the next couple of months.
Once clear of Tarragona the wind picked up, blowing between the ranges of mountains that ran in bands from the interior to the coast. It was like a series of wind tunnels, and at times I thought I was going to be blasted off the road, it was so strong. I slowed down but still able to maintain a speed of 50 mph. The roads were good and fairly quiet after the big city with its small satellite towns and villages. The route was straight, and not many roundabouts to hold us up, so I was covering the distance to Benicassim of 230 km quite swiftly.
When we left the N340 at the junction to Benicassim, it was only 1 km to the campsite 'Bonterra Park'. We were told to have a walk about with a map indicating all the free pitches, and select where we would like to park. The site we selected was at the end of a row in a corner, surrounded by people mostly from Holland.. The site was very busy, and they said we could stay for a month but then they were full. They had Wi-Fi and the internet reception was good, but TV wasn’t great we could only pick up the News channels and UK radio. Lots of people had large 1.2 metre dishes to get UK TV, I will have to invest in one of them.
It was time now to explore the area, and first it was the toilets and showers. There were two blocks close to us and they were clean, with plenty of shower cubicles. Continuing our walk we made our way down to the beach. It was about 1 km and the prom stretched in both directions beside a flat sandy beach. The wind was still blowing strongly as we walked down from the site, and it was cold, but at the beach front there was some shelter from the breeze, and the sun was very warm from a cloudless blue sky. The esplanade was very attractive, and the walk pleasant, but there was nobody about, I think at most we saw half a dozen others. Then I remembered that it was sieata time.
At the end of the prom we made our way up to the town centre, and found the tourist info office. There we got information and maps for the town and a National Park 6 km away, which had hikes up to and around the mountains which stretched behind Benicassim. It was a straight road from the info centre back to the campsite, and there were three supermarkets on the way, Consum, Lidl and a Mercadona, so we are well served for shopping.
The campsite seemed ideal, close to the beach and the shops. It was also very quiet at night even though it was busy. This is probably because it is full of old retirees like ourselves who go to bed early.
Tuesday 26 October – Friday 5 November 2010
We’ve been camping at Bonterra Park in Benicassim for nearly two weeks now and enjoying our stay. We moved to a different pitch after a couple of days, the people next to us thought I had the radio on too loud, this was at mid-day not at night. Rather than have an argument we moved to a better spot a few rows back. We got a lot more of the sun there, so it was much warmer when we sat out during the day.
I bought a large satellite dish for the TV, and the guy next to us helped me to set it up, he had a fancy electronic satellite finder. It was the afternoon, and reception was good for all the UK stations but as the sun went down around 6:00, the signal strength dropped off, and we lost everything but the News and radio. We tried the internet for TV on BBC iplayer but it is blocked for people outside the UK. I found on goggle a site that puts you through a proxy server in England to get round this. It cost £5 per month, and now we can tune into iplayer. Unfortunately the campsite internet doesn’t have a fast downloading speed, so we can’t watch live TV but we can download programmes, very slowly, to view later. So we are still able to keep track of Ann Widdecombe’s ‘dancing’, her pasa doble was a scream.
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| Moira having a rest from cycling. |
The weather has been wonderful, with everyday the sun shining from cloudless blue skies. It hasn’t been too hot that we can’t do energetic things. I’ve been running about four times a week and have got up to 15 km sessions. We have both been out cycling, and Moira has progressed well, she only has to stop for a rest every 15 minutes now. The area has cycleways all over, totally traffic free which I use for running as well. One of the cycle routes runs along an old railway line that has been tarred over. It goes along the coast to the next town of Orpesa, and there are magnificent views of the coast and the Mediterranean all the way.
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| Old railway cycling and walking route |
We went down to the beach the other day to paddle our feet. The water was cold but we saw a couple of people in swimming. Not to be out done I stripped off, and gingerly made my way through the gentle waves. At last I was under and swimming, it was a shock to the system at first but very invigorating once I got used to it. I’ve been in twice since then, and it gets more enjoyable each time. I haven’t managed to persuade Moira to go in, she is happy just paddling her feet.
We are planning to stay here for another two weeks then head further south. There is a nice campsite listed in our book near Denia which we would like to try, and if we like it stay there maybe until after Christmas.
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