Wednesday 4th March

A relaxed start this morning – we plan to visit Morella; another hilltop town, sort of in the direction of the train station for later in the day.

It’s an hour and a half’s ride, but we have a bit of time so everyone helps out with motorhome duties. Nigel’s job is to watch the grey waste evacuating and make sure the bucket doesn’t over-flow …………. “Nigel, are you watching that bucket?!” Uh oh!

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Then a coffee in my favourite ‘local’ in Alcossebre before setting off.

As we sat enjoying our elevenses, two ladies from the ‘solos’ group came over. Without saying hello, one of them demands: “How did you get here?!” It turns out she’d bought a massive ‘electric frying pan’ and they were on bikes so weren’t sure how they were going to get it back to the site. We gladly offered to put it in the car and deliver later. Although as they disappeared, laughing at their good fortune, I realised I didn’t know which pitch they were on and they didn’t know mine!! Uh oh.

Morella – well, it was OK – to be fair the weather wasn’t quite as nice as the previous day but, after you’ve been to Vilafamés, although Morella is bigger, it’s definitely not better. Our first task was to find a loo. At one point Nigel disappeared, coming back to say he’d found one. Judith and I are dubious, the building looked like private offices!

What was interesting was the twisty, switchback road to get to it. This is one of the main routes up to Northern Spain and the ferry ports – lots of lorries – I can understand why ‘Ralliers’ prefer to go South to Valencia then North, or indeed go back up towards Barcelona to pick up a better road.

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Having ‘done’ the castle, we really struggled to find somewhere for lunch; we were out of season; rather late in the day; and there was just nothing suitable to be had. So we moved out of the upper town to a restaurant I had noticed on the way in. When we got there, disappointingly, it seemed to be a transport cafe; nevertheless, we were hungry and needs must. The locals definitely gave us a curious look, but we received a nice welcome and as soon as we were seated – mineral water, menus and lovely bread were delivered. The food was brilliant – my starter was ham and white asparagus (yum) and main of ham, egg and chips and Nigel’s sausage, egg and chips – were excellent!

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As we went back out to the car, the waiter ran after us as we’d left our bottle of mineral water on the table – great service!

And so the journey back to Benicarló-Peñíscola train station; we didn’t have too much in the way of spare time! Let’s just call it good timing!

Farewell Judith and Nigel – I’ve had a really, really terrific time! x

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I got into bed early, as I’m pretty exhausted. Just looking at my phone when I realise it’s JW’s birthday – I leapt out of bed to give him a call – good job there’s an hour’s time difference! 😱🎂