Days out

Being away for so long on a trip that’s not a  ‘road trip’ means life settles into a day to day routine. Every day isn’t a ‘we need to pack it in’ day like most holidays are. As I said last time, it’s more about being in your ‘home away from home’. More days are spent mooching around rather than doing anything particularly exciting, but what is exciting about being here is being able to spend time with friends - long term ones for Ian and new for me.

Justin and Jamie (as I mentioned previously) live locally and as they work many evenings are often free in the day, which makes a perfect time to catch up!

We’ve managed to have a few days out with them (Ian more than me, but more on that later!) which meant we got to explore a bit more of the local area.

Our first trip out was to Calpe (or possibly Calp - it goes by both names in a very Spanish “we can’t agree on this, so we’ll use both” sort of way). Calpe is about a 30 min drive north up the coast from our campsite, so after a few coffees,  we took off the insulated silver screen across the windscreen, rolled off the chocks, packed Agy up and prepared to leave.

Just then, I noticed that someone had recently posted this picture on one of the motorhome Facebook groups, asking if anyone was in Benidorm. This got me very excited, as if you look very carefully and zoom in, you can see the rear of a tiny grey silver Agy right at the top of the picture in the campsite. She’s nestled in between all the big motorhomes! (picture shared with permission).

Having looked at the picture we left our pitch for the day, and headed out.

Until this point we had experienced wall to wall sunshine during the day, so it came as a bit of a shock as we drove north to see a cloud over the nearby mountain and slightly dull skies developing over the Calpe mountains. In fact as we arrived and parked up we decided we needed a jacket and long trousers. This was not the January weather we had come to expect! 

Now, Caple has a quite impressive rock that dominates the view as you drive towards it, in fact the whole drive was fairly spectacular. Benidorm is surrounded by mountains, but as you leave the highway to follow the coastal road you weave through short tunnels, and glimpse signs of the original road to Calpe as you whizz by (in as much as Agy whizzes anywhere). The views really are stunning.

Arriving in Calpe we met up with Justin and Jamie and headed off walking toward the famous rock. We had no idea it was famous, but Justin filled us in on its cultural connections with the Rock of Gibraltar. We decided against walking up the rock (it’s not for the faint hearted we understand). Instead we enjoyed looking up at it, the views toward the town and the sea, and perhaps most importantly making friends with the local cats!   

All in all a fabulous day with fabulous people.