Week 19 - Twitchers in the making?

Easter Monday 28th March 2016.
It’s moving day, we’ve not moved far but after the car breakdown last week I must confess to feeling a bit nervous to start and probably will until I regain confidence in the car.

The journey was not far around 240 km along motorway standard roads during which the car behaved extremely well. Indeed the only problem we had was being pulled off the road by the Guardia Civil just before we crossed the border into Spain. I was obviously targeted as the outside lane was closed forcing everyone into the near side lane. There were four vehicles (cars) in front of me, I was the only one instructed, by a great big policeman with an even bigger gun, off the road into a service area where there were a number of heavy goods vehicles. I parked up and collected together both the car and caravan paperwork and my driving licence, all of which you are required to carry whenever driving in mainland Europe and went back to Mr Plod. He directed me to a mobile office where a chap in a uniform and a clipboard introduced himself as being a member of the Portuguese research and statistics department and spent the next twenty minutes questioning me about all aspects of our stay. I was so relieved I answered with enthusiasm.

We arrived at CAMPING PARK NACIONAL DE MONFRAGUE early afternoon and was able to get a pitch near the bar which meant good free internet access.

Tuesday 29th March 2016.
Paid a visit to PLACENCIA Market today. At the very top of town but fortunately accessed from the carparks by a series of moving pavement/escalators the town centre is, like many Spanish towns, busy and bustling without any shops occupied by national chains. The market in this particular town is one of the best we have visited anywhere in Europe, the fruit and vegetables are excellent and at a good price. On our last visit we bought a 3 kilo superb tasting box of cherries for a paltry €7.00 and a 3.1/2 kilo box of strawberries for just €3.00. Sadly it’s not yet cherry season but we still managed to get some excellent strawberries at around the same €3.00 price.

Wednesday 30th March 2016.
Bird Safari Day. We came to this site last year with the express purpose of attending a Bird Safari, the site runs two a day but the weather was so (unseasonably) hot at the time that all safari’s were suspended. But not today. We met Valentine, pronounced Balentine, our guide at 9.00 sadly two of the expected six customers failed to turn up, which delayed our set off time but gave us much more room in the Nissan Navara - how you are supposed to get seven people in them??

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We had a stunning bird spotting tour of the area, it should have lasted four hours but Valentine was such an interesting and enthusiastic guide going far beyond what was expected of him it was over five hours before we arrived back at the campsite. I will not say more about the tour as it will be of no interest to those not in attendance but I have listed below as many as I can remember of the birds we saw. If you happen at any time to be in the area we would highly recommend a bird safari, ours cost €35.00 (about £27.50) pp including exclusive use of high quality binoculars and group use of  a spotter scope. Great value.

Seen on the safari (in no particular order) I have added a link to each bird/reptile or further information.
Eurasian Griffon Vulture
Eurasian Black Vulture
Egyptian Vulture
Golden Eagle
Spanish Eagle
Red Kite
Black Kite
Common Buzzard
Black Stork
Blue Rock Thrush
Eurasian Hoopoe
Great Spotted Cuckoo
Eurasian Nuthatch
Great Cormorant
Spanish Terrapin - Hands up all those who knew Spain had a native Terrapin.
Ocellated Lizard

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Thursday 31st March 2016.
Today we made our “enth” (and for this adventure our last) visit to MERIDA the town with (it seems) more roman remains than Rome. We just had two places to see, first the Circo Romano (Roman circus). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says that “. . . Used for chariot racing, it was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome and other circus buildings throughout the empire. Measuring more than 400 m in length and 30 m of width, it is one of the best preserved examples of the Roman circus. It could house up to 30,000 spectators. Mérida's circus remains very well preserved. As is true with the Circus Maximus, most circuses's structures have been destroyed over time as the area occupied by them was great and often in very flat land near their respective cities. The Mérida circus however has kept numerous structures, including the Porta Pompae ("main entrance"), the Porta Triumphalis ("triumph gate"), the spina (the longitudinal wall), the tribunal iudicium ("tribune of the judges”) . . .”. Although the circus was a  huge rather featureless open area it was still easy to imagine the races that took place there - well I have seen CHARLTON HESTON in BEN-HUR.

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The second of our two places was the ACUEDUCTO DE LOS MILAGROS (Miraculous Aqueduct) not quite in the same class as the aqueduct at Segovia but well worth the visit.

Friday 1st April 2016.
Onward, ever onward. Today we have moved to a small site a short distance from the E901 Madrid/Valencia road, KIKO PARK RURAL. We are only here one night and have visited before, a couple of years ago. It is a clean and tidy site but being quite high can get cold. Last time we were here snow was falling as we left, not much and it didn’t settle but snow never the less.

Saturday 2nd April 2016.
Last time we left Kiko Park Rural it was snowing this time we had to scrape the ice off the windscreen before we could move. The way back to the main road is up a very steep hill so I went for a drive around to make sure the car engine was nice and warm before hitching up and dragging our 1.8 tons of caravan up the slope.

The journey to Xabia (javea) where we are staying for the next two weeks was easy if boring on the motorway and we were relieved to arrive and find a number of large pitches to choose from as last time we were here there was a choice of one, the other 192 pitches were full. The temperature had slowly risen as we dropped down from the mountainous area around Kiko Park Rural to the flat sea level area around here and the temperature in the van when we pitched was a comfortable 25 degrees - just what we need.

© Stephen Ghost 2015