A lazy start, once Bren had sorted Jamie at 7.30, to another bright sunny day which had once again started off as rather cool. During breakfast we were approached by an Irish motorhomer, asking for assistance with a flat battery, which of course we were happy to do if he didn't mind waiting until we were leaving - no problem. Once we were all sorted we went across, got him started and had a brief chat during which we discovered his wife was responsible for naming The Wild Atlantic Way. He told us where they lived, which we noted, and told us we'd be very welcome if we were passing.
Our plan today was to head south west along the coast to somewhere around Malaga. Going inland via Granada would have been faster but the weather forecast was not good that way and we later saw that the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range close to that city, was covered in snow - it was plenty cold enough where we were thankyou!
Back onto the A7. From hereon the A7 meets and diverges several times with the AP7 autopista toll road so gets very busy, passing through many coastal towns. Tourism is of course the main occupation in this part of Spain with rows of apartments and all the supporting industry. Unfortunately some of the driving leaves much to be desired and half the time it's a matter of trying to work out just what they intend to do. Coupled with wildly varying speed limits this is an intensive driving experience.
Nevertheless we survived, pausing at a signposted Aldi near Almerimar for lunch before starting to consider our overnight stop. We thought Malaga would be a good target distance so Bren spent a little time in researching our campsite apps. However, as we learned from a newspaper article, motorhoming has expanded out of all proportion in Spain and it soon became evident that we had little hope of finding anywhere on or near the coast.
Although the current news carries many reports of Spanish cities clamping down on tourists, they are mainly aimed at fixed letting accomodation, such as AirBNB, which means there is no reasonably priced housing for locals, and you can understand their anger. But nobody seems yet to have noticed that the country is also being swamped with motorhome and camper travellers for whom very little provision is being made, certainly not on any scale. There are a few enterprising individuals who have taken note and provide good quality "camperstops", places where you can stay short term with proper facilities, but we've not seen any new full campsites. As far as we can see it is necessary to make early prior reservation to have any hope of staying in a particular place. We forecast that it won't be too long before there is a national clampdown and Spain, certainly the Costas, will become a no-go area for the likes of us.
But I digress. In the past we have looked at places a little way from the popular coastal resorts and to this end Bren found a couple heading into the mountain area north of Malaga. We decided to take our chance on a likely candidate, although with no services, and programmed TomTom. It turned out to be the large parking area for a local sports facility on the edge of the village of Casabermeja with loads of room and no other motorhome so we picked a likely spot and planted ourselves for the night. Nothing there except fabulous scenery, it's only downside for us was the motorway in the valley below was very audible although once buttoned up we hardly could hear it.
But it's already pretty cold.........
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