…falls mainly… well, you know the rest. What about the wind in Spain though, eh? No rhyme there to help you out, is there? We’ll give you a clue. The wind is following us; that’s where it is and we’ve experienced a fair old bit of it in Spain.

The first bit of serious wind we encountered was on the drive to a nature reserve between Barcelona and Valencia. As we were driving along, the crosswinds were so strong that they blew two of our vents open (well, Bertha’s vents actually… you get what I mean!). After hastily rigging up some string to tie them down, we arrived safely at our destination, but the wind didn’t die down, so we faced Bertha into it, battened down the hatches, replaced the string with guylines and slept in the lower bed to keep our centre of gravity down. We thought that might be the end of the story, but as we drove across the mountains towards Granada we again were subject to wind; this time swirling, so there was nowhere to hide. Now my fluid mechanics isn’t particularly good and we’re quite new to this motorhoming malarkey, so we experimented with parking in different positions, before sidling up to a large French motorhome (that arrived after us) and sheltering in its shadow!

It may have been windy, but aside from that, it’s been gorgeous weather with some absolutely awesome sunsets. We’ve noticed that they’ve been getting later too; driving west within a time zone and south towards the equator has made quite a noticeable difference to the time of sunsets (as well as the days getting longer anyway now). We’ve also seen some stunning scenery; beautiful beaches, incredible mountains and stunning wetlands with some very exciting birds; who knew that Spain had so much to offer?! It has also given us our first dodgy-tasting water of the trip. When we filled up at the nature reserve, we noticed the water tasted a bit like the water that you get at the Pump Rooms in Bath; a little salty… which probably means it’s full of great minerals! However, it was too salty for us, so we bought a 6.5 litre container of water for drinking from a petrol station, which we polished off within a day, using the rest of the salty water for washing.

Spain has also been the place where we’ve started spotting other British motorhomes. It’s interesting; we go for 82 days of our trip without seeing a single British motorhome, then 3 come along within the space of a week! After our polite conversation with the British couple near Carcassonne (yeah, ok, we realise that’s France… but it’s near Spain!), the next couple we got chatting to were at the nature reserve. Di + Pete have been involved in the motorhome world for quite a while, including reviewing motorhomes and writing articles for MMM. Our chat with them gave us a glimpse into a different way of motorhoming; driving 500 miles in a day (I’m not sure Bertha would even make 500 miles in a day!), then staying in areas for slightly longer. Maybe a motorhome magazine would be interested in us reviewing a motorhome on a long-term test drive…? Maybe up to the top of Norway? We can but dream!

The other British couple that we met, reminded us of the strong community that we are part of as motorhome owners. Before they even knew our names, we had been invited around to Paul + Jane’s motorhome for the evening. They’re relatively new to motorhoming (last 3 years or so) and this is their first adventure with a dog. Not just any dog though; a gorgeous 8 month old black cocker spaniel called Peggy. Rather unsurprisingly, their blog is named in her honour: Peggy does Portugal. It was great to swap stories with them, talk about adventure, share tips on places to go, but most of all, it was lovely to be welcomed into their home – a most enjoyable evening.

Our plan now is to continue to head south within Spain before we begin to turn back towards home. It seems like the wind might be a constant theme in Spain though… anyone got any tips for motorhoming in gales?