Our grand tour of southern Spain January 20th Day Six

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Friday 20^th January Day six

Is the motorhome journey south from Irun to Valencia a boring one?

What a difference a day can make. We are away by 0800. It was a peaceful night in the carpark at Casante. Some teenagers going to and from football practice and that was it. Four mohos in for the night. 

Today’s driving is proving far less stressful.  No rain, no spray, no flooding, no rude lorry drivers to contend with. No rapid height gains into snow and freezing temperatures. No frozen pipes. Blissfully a day of open roads, very little traffic, polite lorry drivers and varied and interesting scenery. Yippee!

We've stopped one hour on from last night’s site at a service station where we are enjoying a coffee and muffins for breakfast. We have just witnessed a dramatic stunning sunrise directly in front of us. The dark sky slowly turning indigo blue and then light blue in the upper reaches.  Below, just above the horizon of silhouettes rounded hill peaks, the sky takes on a peach and golden hue and then, very slowly, a fiery orange red disc begins to appear and climbs steadily out of its night time slumber. As it's tendrils of golden light creep silently across the vast landscape chasing away the shadows, features begin to take on three-dimensional shape, form and texture once more. A few hundred vast windmills silhouetted against this magical colour palette cannot be adequately described in words. 

The occasional fluffy clouds scattered across a brightly light blue sky have their flat bottoms a brilliant fiery pink and their billowing tops, an ominous dark grey. And then there is the occasional high plane vapour trail glinting bright gold in the high skies. Simply stunning, magical and life affirming.

There are literally hundreds of wind turbines scattered across these hills and plateaus. I don't ever recall seeing so many anywhere else on my travels.  They are fascinating; all turning slowly in what is a stiff breeze falling off the hillsides from the west. And, it is surprising just how high up we are as we pass Zaragoza and continue south. Regular signboards update us on our altitude .... the highest shows 1100 metres. I roughly reckon that's around 3600' or so. Through passes in the hills, we steadily climb before dropping down into enormous plateau basins some twenty miles or so across. All are ringed by distant hills; their steep slopes covered by scrub; their profiles well rounded by eons of physical weathering. 

Limestones, sandstones, clays, and huge bulges of windblown and deposited loess ... loose sands and gravels. A landscape of a multitude of colours ... whites, greys, terracotta's, ambers, oranges and reddy browns. Gullying and rills on the steeper slopes along with flood relief channels. The area is bone dry but clearly that isn't always the case. 

Our attention is regularly grabbed by the red kites. They sit on fence posts, strut at roadsides or hover above central reservations. Beautiful birds aren't they. Behind them, agriculture is the dominant pastime across the basin landscapes. We pass through one that has vineyards as far as the eye can see in all directions, the flatness punctuated by tall buildings where grapes are fermented and stored in giant vats. People are out early sorting vines and trellises, snipping stems and straightening posts. 

As we progress further south, it remains a chilly 5C and as we still climb to over 1000m, it falls to 2C. Brilliant sunshine, seriously cold! The vegetation changes are fascinating and in this part of the world it's to do with latitude, altitude, soil type and proximity to the sea. As we start descending towards the far distant coastal plains still over 120 miles away, steep hillsides of pine plantations give way to several plateau basins where arable crops of cereals dominate. Nothing is planted yet but the soils are ploughed and tilled ready. Large, long, low concrete farm buildings suggest some form of battery farming as well, although of what type we have no idea.

Irrigation pipes abound in these upper plateaus; all on legs to keep them raised above ground .... indicative of cold winters? Road signs give snow flake and ice warnings so I am assuming that winters up here can be very, very, cold. Talking of which, far away, on the northern horizon, the snow-covered Pyrenees loom large above everything else. Always fascinating to see how far down a snowline comes. 

Next in the vegetation succession down to the coast come the first olive groves, intermixed with vineyards and market garden crops. It is a long, gradual descent to the coastal plain and as we fall, temperatures rise to 16C. Out on the coastal plain we find orange orchards under huge billowing white woven canopies. Deep green shiny leaves, bright orange blobs. 

Some motorhome forums have people saying how boring this journey from Irun is; how tedious the journey can be. Clearly, they are not geographers. Exciting geology and geomorphology, varied agricultural practices, distant isolated villages each with large grain and or grape processing facilities, scattered cement making factories and huge wind farms on every basin we cross and on the hills ringing them. This is not a boring journey or landscape. Desolate in places yes. Fairly windswept indeed but definitely not boring. The privilege of being a geographer. You never stop interpreting and interrogating a landscape you cross. Makes for interesting journey conversations especially when one of you is a geographer/geologist/amateur historian and your other half is a biologist/ geographer. 

Some tips then from today's journey:

Service stations - don't go into car parks. Most have spaces under metal shading roofs and all are only 2.5m high at most. Park in with the lorries instead. Bip and Go tags works better in Spain. You drive up to a toll lane and just keep going. The barrier lifts, you carry on through in second gear. In France we kept having to stop fully and then wait for the barrier to lift. 

Our campsite for the next three nights in Valencia is Nomadic Camping Valencia. It is on S4S. A small gravel site fenced in with spaces for around 30 motorhomes. Level pitches, good service point. Clean modern facilities. Showers are solar heated and hot but not for very long in winter months. Very helpful staff. However, be aware that it is on an industrial estate and there is a noisy road 200m away. There is good security gate and code access. Metro tram stop is 600m away and a 20 min trip gets you into Valencia. There are plenty of local cycle routes as well. Pitches are small, just enough to get chairs out. Think of it as a few nights ‘stop and peace of mind’; up from a car park but not a proper campsite. There is a large Carrefour 9 minutes away. 

Useful information

Costs today - fuel 154 euros; three nights at Nomadic Camping - 67 euros with EHU

Route: AP15 - AP 68 – AP23

Distance: 240 miles

Campsite: https://www.searchforsites.co.uk/marker.php?id=40828