Month: November 2019

Today’s journey was not pleasant. We left in thick fog and rain, which we hoped was low cloud. The route took us downhill quite quickly and indeed the fog did lessen, although the rain became heavier.

We were on the Autovia del Sur again but the road was not as good as it had been yesterday. Between that and the weather, we were grateful that today’s leg was not overly long.

Tonight we are seemingly alone on this campsite, aside from a large colony of cats. Dusty is in high dudgeon. There are kittens all over the place and some come from a mother who looks very like Chloé. It is /so/ hard! Don’t be surprised if we smuggle a couple away with us… No, of course I won’t. I can’t, can I? But really…so many of them. Poor wee things. Not just one litter either, they are different ages.

*sigh*

The rain has ceased for a while but tomorrow is forecast to be worse and to also add strong winds to the mix.

We have had to acknowledge that El Rocío now has to be off the agenda. A great pity as this was somewhere that I had been looking forward to. The sandy campsite is however notorious for being unmanageable after rain and the first year that we came down planning to stay there, it was actually closed due to mud after freak rains. So, we shall skip it.

Where to go instead?

Well, we think that we shall revisit Valverde del Camino (a tarmacked car park impervious to the deluge) and then go on perhaps towards Huelva before heading to Sagres. We are trying to arrange our timing such that we can get a month’s stay there with a discount. We have failed to do this previously as the Orbitur computer system cannot cope with booking a month that runs over the year end!

As ever, plans are flexible.

Dusty may be a problem over the next 24 to 48 hours but we have no idea how to mitigate that. We are between a rock and a hard place and I fear that it is up to us to tolerate the results of his frustration. There is nowhere to take him, even if it were not so wet, but we need to sit the storm out in a safe place. At least we know that he will have some great walks on the Via Verde at Valverde when we get there (assuming that the aire is not full when we arrive). I hope that he can forgive us a couple of difficult days.

We plan to dine at Casa Direccióne while we are in Valverde. They have a new menu, so we are looking forward to that. I shall miss the "Some Eggs Blacker Than Coal" though, it was a stunning dish.

En route to Valverde we shall call at the shopping centre outside Sevilla. We need to find Nell a new lead and also get some catnip for Dusty. The last time that we called at the pet shop there it reduced me to tears, seeing all of the puppies in their glass tanks. It was horrible. On the plus side, there is a large Carrefour for us to stock up at and the last time that we were there I saw the goatherd and his flock out grazing the scrub on the undeveloped plots. That was great. Very picturesque.