Our Very First Road Trip to Southern Spain as Nomad Virgins

The Start. April 2019

Next is driving this beast: If you are not used to driving a large vehicle as your only source of transport it can be quite daunting especially when situations get a bit tight. So one of the first difficulties we encountered is its appalling turning circle, manoeuvring it into campsite parking spaces with overhanging trees and low walls is interesting, and some Spanish supermarket car parks can be a strange shape with tight turns and ridiculously small parking bays that can get you into a bit of a pickle. So our advice would be: If you are in any doubt, have a look at the place before you go romping in and if you end up in a sticky situation DON’T PANIC (If Johnny Foreigner behind you has to wait a few minutes then they have to wait!)

Next, The vehicle height: Some supermarkets (whose name shall be withheld) have height restrictions to their caparks? So here's the scenario: It's time to stock your vehicle with supplies, you've navigated your big Mothership round tiny European city streets only to find you can't get in the car park and there is no way you can park nearby in the overcrowded streets! Out of town retail park supermarkets are the ones to head for. It might seem an obvious thing but when you are in a strange country and you might be using google to locate the shops it might just put you in a difficult situation.



Right, let's have some toilet talk? The Mothership has a standard thetford toilet cassette that has enough capacity for 2 adults for 2 days before it needs to be emptied. We have found in France where we avoid the motorways some of the N route picnic aries have chemical waist emptying troughs, and in Spain, again some of the major road network service areas have the same facility (but not all)  So our mantra is “if you can empty it, empty it” as it could get a bit messy if you forget. 

Traveling with a pet:  As we have mentioned previously we have Suzy the Race Cat who's part of the family so as we had sold up and headed off with everything on our nomadic adventure, “what to do”? Try to rehome her or do we take her with us? We decided to take her as she’s quite a calm girl we felt if we kept a close eye on her that she hopefully wouldn't stray too far, 

So with the pet paperwork sorted off we all went (pre-brexit) as it turned out she was purrrfect. Happy in her very large travel box that takes up half the floor space in the living area and exploring outside the Mothership when we parked up and all hunkered down together inside for the night. You never know what sort of creatures come out at night in these foreign lands?

On the positive side to all of the above! It's great traveling in The Mothership, cruising along, sitting up high looking down at a car driver's feeling big and superior, also being at almost the same level as a truck drivers giving the truck driver wave. Fantastic  🙂

The Journey

We decided to take 2 weeks to wind our way down to Southern Spain from Calais using the D road network, stopping at campsites to enjoy lovely places that might be a bit more off the beaten track. We had joined the caravan and camping club and used them to pick our stops, part of the reason for this was: We had set off on the first part of our new adventure with the Mothership loaded to the gunnels with all our worldly possessions that included the shower cubical full from floor to ceiling rendering it unusable so we needed campsite facilities, not always the cheapest option, but that's how we did it! As they say we learned on the job and experienced a lot of the pitfalls along the way but quickly got to grips with it.

All in all it was a very exciting and fantastic experience but like all great adventures it very occasionally went a bit pear shaped ;)