The fantastic gardens at Marina d'Or, Oropesa

Ripolles? sculpture at Marina d'Or 

I'm going to blog about our new campsite tomorrow, but first I wanted to show you photographs I took at a fantastic nearby park we discovered on our first afternoon here. There is a large holiday urbanization between Camping Didota and the town of Oropesa. It is called Marina d'Or, Ciudad de Vacaciones (Vacation City) and was built in the mid 2000s at the whim of property developer Jesus Ger Garcia. There are multiple campsites as well as dozens of holiday homes and apartment blocks, but in true Spanish style the city isn't finished. Around the resort are plots of waste ground where the infrastructure is all ready - streets, lighting, cycle paths and pedestrian crossings - but additional planned hotels and apartments have never been built. I learned that Marina d'Or was primarily intended for Spanish holidaymakers because this part of the coast isn't especially popular with foreign visitors. However the crash of 2008 caused dire problems with finances and apparently as recently as 2014 many of the apartments were still deserted for much of the year (according to this Daily Mail article anyway!).

Elephant shower 

We strolled into and around some of the resort on Friday afternoon. There were few businesses open, but that is not unusual for coastal Spain on February afternoons. Those that were closed looked just to be shut for the winter rather abandoned permanently. I think Marina d'Or has weathered the worst of its financial crisis and is on the up again. The central street is heavily adorned with Moorish style lighting frames and should look beautiful after dark so we must go back of an evening to see the lights. Along the beach giant fibreglass elephants commemorate Hannibal coming ashore around here with his famous war elephants in 220BC. The modern day ones also provide a practical purpose in that shower heads are plumbed into the ends of their trunks so swimmers can rinse off seawater!

Ripolles? sculpture at Marina d'Or 

The Jardines Marina d'Or park covers a large area and contains differently themed gardens including Koi carp ponds, bird aviaries, a children's playground, a cacti garden and a paved area with a 1950s American Cadillac car. Dotted around are numerous bizarre sculptures such as the ones pictured here and at the top of this post. To our eyes at least they look like the work of Ripolles, a fairly local artist we first saw nearby at Vilafames last year. I couldn't see any name on these works although we didn't get very close. This multicoloured man is reaching out to take oranges from a tree!

Orca mosaic benches at Marina d'Or 

The gardens are liberally provided with beautiful Gaudi-esque benches, mosaiced like those at Park Guell in Barcelona. Some are abstractly shaped and decorated. Others resemble animals and birds. There are also formal gardens, trees and shrubs from five continents, all labelled so we knew what they were, and many birds including swans, peacocks, and ducks. The Mandarin ducks looked particularly elegant and I photographed a Koi carp next to a swan so you can see just how big these fish have grown!

The park is surrounded by brick arched fences and is right on the seafront so we could explore its fantastic sights while hearing the ocean nearby. It is obviously a popular recreation spot for families from Oropesa and I am glad we got to see it at this time of year because I imagine it gets ridiculously busy during the summer months.

Getting even further back to basics than caravan living

We are both feeling pretty tired today after not one, but

Wrens are nestbuilding in the woodshed 

two late nights out in succession. Two! The reason is our having visited our friends Chris and Marta at their new-to-them rural idyll nearby. I mentioned a couple of days ago that I would write about their lifestyle so here's the gist.

Chris and Marta have also essentially been caravan dwellers for the past year or so, but last summer they splashed out a ridiculously small amount of money on three-quarters of an acre of amenity land in the Haute-Vienne region of France. They have a secluded field with a well, a small wooden cabin and some trees. Amenity land isn't intended for full-time inhabitation so this is ideal as a stopping-point where they can spend a few weeks between journeys to pastures new.

The cabin was in surprisingly good condition as the land

The shower 

hadn't been used for much more than sheep for a decade, and Chris especially is a dab hand at constructing all kinds of things out of wood and gleaned materials. This rocket is actually a shower cubicle and Chris plans to use a similar triangle method for a lean-to storage area. He has already built a composting toilet having discussed the method when we all visited their yurt-dwelling friends in Devon last year. Units that were already in the cabin have been moved to its porch area to create a remarkably spacious outdoor kitchen and the cabin itself now contains bunk beds and a surprisingly efficient little wood-burning stove. You can't move for woodland in this part of France so collecting enough to fuel the stove, a great steampunky water heater (which is pictured below) and a small chiminea is easy, if time-consuming.

The well was dry as it had been neglected for so long, but is now working again by way of a 12v pump, just like we have into our aquaroll, which currently fills small containers but will eventually be piped directly to two huge water butts. These butts collect rainwater too and provide enough water for washing people and clothing - everything except drinking water.

All their electrical power comes from a solar panel that

The water heater 

charges up leisure batteries to power LED lights and similar mod cons, plus they have a gas camping stove for additional cooking. Marta has found fabulous things at a nearby Brocante including a vintage manually operated food blender. It works just as well as, if not better than, my mains powered handblender, but again takes considerably longer to do the job. Chris and Marta don't mind the time aspects though as this is simply a part of their lifestyle and, having stepped well and truly away from the standard UK ratrace, they enjoy the daily challenges.

I love their quirky decor touches such as a hand-painted umbrella stand and a found Monark chain guard on the wall. It's lovely to be able to sit outside in the evenings at this time of year watching blue and great tits darting to the bird feeders. Marta and I were even lucky enough to observe the wren harvesting moss to line its nest. Of course, it vanished as soon as Marta went for her camera! Last night there was a thunderstorm with torrential rain at times and huge lightning bolts, and previously the sky was so clear (with almost no light pollution) that we saw more stars at one time than we could remember seeing in years.

We are so impressed with everything Chris and Marta have achieved in the short time they have been on their land. Despite owning it for nearly a year, they have only stayed there in bursts of a few weeks at a time, yet it has a cosy, homely vibe. Dave and I have talked, vaguely, about a similar setup for ourselves, but both know that we probably aren't tough enough to cope as happily. We might have been sitting outside until gone midnight for the past couple of evenings, but we like our switch-off-and-on-able caravan heating overnight. And we wouldn't want to have to go wood-gathering in the rain!

Dave and Chris in the cabin porch 

We're in a British bubble at Champagnac La Riviere

Our last-but-one campsite before we return to the UK is

Church at Champagnac La Riviere 

Camping Parc Verger in the pretty Limousin village of Champagnac La Riviere. We chose to come here because of its proximity to the new home of our friends Chris and Marta (whom you've met in previous posts). They are about an hour's walk away from our campsite and I am hoping to write about their fantastic French adventure in a future post. In the meantime, Camping Parc Verger is kind of perfect for us right now not only due to that location, but also because of its Britishness which is swiftly acclimatising us to what we will face in a week's time. Once past the barrier, it's hard to tell we are still in France - this could be a Caravan Club site anywhere in the UK. It does feel a bit odd hearing so many English voices all the time.

Now run by Franc and Lisa, who took over last year, Camping Parc Verger has been British-owned for years. We have a pleasant view towards a neighbouring lake from our pitch and everywhere around here is a wonderfully lush green. We have seen jays, wagtails and hoopoes on site, and cowsips, daffodils and bluebells in meadows and woodland nearby. The site is just out of the village centre and within a hundred metres of a Voie Verte cycleway that runs from Oradour sur Vayres to Chalus. We have already cycled the four kilometres to the Oradour end as part of a circular route - it's worth noting that while the Voie Verte may be fairly flat, the surrounding roads are most definitely not! They are mostly quiet though and cars are great at giving cyclists a wide berth, but we got very puffed out very quickly.

Back on the campsite, everyone here at the moment is

Lake view from our pitch 

either English or Scottish and apparently this is the case most of the time - Parc Verger is open all year - other than in high season when Dutch, Germans, Belgians and French also book in. We are paying €18 a night (Discounts are available for stays over 14 nights) for a hardstanding pitch with 16A electricity which seems luxurious after the mostly 6A campsites elsewhere. In theory we can have the heating and the kettle on at the same time! We've not tried yet though, because we don't want to be the ones to blow the trip switch! The shower block is small but excellent with lots of hot water in the generously sized shower cubicles. There is a disabled-access wetroom too that anyone can use if no disabled people are onsite. Dave tried it out and was actually impressed - so it must be good! The little cabin Reception has essential groceries for sale, and books for exchange. Plus the wifi has a good signal sitewide and is free. The only thing missing is a laundry sink, although there is a washing machine and tumble dryer, but I managed just fine with our red bucket atop the stone work surface by the dishwashing sinks - there's hot water here too.

On the downside, it certainly is cold this far north and we managed to get ourselves rained on yesterday. You can see the thick clouds in my photograph and it's pretty much the same today too. We have been here since Tuesday and have only sat outside in the sun once. Oh well, I suppose we need to be getting used to that too!

Our pitch at Camping Parc Verger 

Walking the Montroig campo - El Mas dels Tregells

What I love most about spontaneous make-it-up-as-we-go-

Marigold flower 

along walks around unknown places are the surprises we encounter en route. Dave plotted yesterday's circular route through the countryside (campo) around Montroig to be mostly along agricultural tracks (camis) with a couple of sections using dry river beds (barrancs). We were expecting to see the vegetable crops, olive trees, other harvestable trees, lots of squashed processional caterpillars, abandoned scrubland and the occasional barking dog. We did not expect to see brightly coloured orange and yellow verges of cultivated marigolds so were delighted to find ourselves walking past several of these areas. And we certainly did not expect to suddenly find ourselves passing a pseudo-Medieval castle! Fortunately said 'castle', El Mas dels Tregells, had an informative plaque outside explaining just what it was and how its appearance had come about.

El Mas dels Tregells 

This farmhouse is also known as Sant Rafael and during

Sant Rafael at El Mas dels Tregells 

the Middle Ages it was the centre of its own township. Pretty much all evidence of this town is now buried beneath its surrounding agricultural fields so the Mas stands alone looking either proudly impressive or a bit self conscious, depending on your point of view. At the end of the nineteenth century it was restored and given its current neo-Gothic look complete with side turrets, battlements and machicolations. Now, I admit we didn't know what machicolations were and I thought it might be a bizarre mistranslation from the Catalan (matacans) or Spanish (maracanes), but No! It's a real word in English for holes in the floor of the overhanging battlements through which rocks or boiling oil etc. could be dropped onto the heads of any optimistic attackers below. Good luck slipping that into conversation any time soon!

Our planned two hours walking turned into three as we got ourselves somewhat lost by relying on signposts instead of Dave's intuition. This did allow us to see a fabulous murmuration of hundreds of starlings coming into roost. The flock made the most incredible shapes in the sky and I loved watching them for several minutes. I don't remember seeing birds in these numbers in the UK for at least a couple of decades now. Is that because they are just not in our skies anymore or have I just been in the wrong place? Sadly I couldn't get an image for this post as my phone isn't remotely up to that!

So I will leave you instead without another plant picture. We don't know what this is and, judging by where it was growing, it is probably nothing special at all, but its leaves were the most gorgeous red colour in the sunshine.

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We get heavy rain in Cynghordy and Now neonics are killing our birds as well as our bees

There's ever more frightening news emerging regarding not only the fate

of Britain's bees, but now also, it is being discovered, our wild birds too. I received this urgent email yesterday from SumOfUs:

"The bee-harming pesticides we’ve been fighting for years are worse than we imagined. Research suggests that neonicotinoids aren’t just decimating bee colonies - they’re hurting birds too. Researchers found that in areas with high concentrations of neonicotinoids, bird populations declined every year. This means our worst fears are coming true - neonicotinoids may be moving up the food chain and killing our birds and our bees.

For the sake of the birds, the bees, and the whole food chain, we are challenging one of the biggest neonicotinoids producers of them all: Bayer. In two weeks, we’re going straight to Bayer’s door with our massive petition - and we hope to have your name in our massive petition box."

Please sign and share this vital SumOfUs petition.

And now you've done that, let me show you our lovely new campsite in

Cwmcuttan lake 

Carmarthenshire! We are now at Cwmcuttan in the village of Cynghordy on a Camping And Caravanning Club CS for a change. It is very lush and green - the grass is absolutely sodden - but we have a large hardstanding pitch with room enough for Bailey and the awning as well as the car. The CS is full, but doesn't feel it as all five pitches are a good distance from each other. We have electric hookup, water and waste, and recycling facilities close by. Plus we get to use the site wifi and all for £12 a night. The wifi is a real bonus as we are already getting close to having used up our month's allowance on the Osprey and there's still a lot of month left. This will save me having to spend another tenner buying a data add-on. For anyone else using an Osprey while travelling, as we are, we've discovered that poor internet reception can sometimes be remedied by propping the device up in the skylight. We found this out when on the valley campsite at Broadgate Farm and it served us well at Crab Mill Farm campsite too.

Cwmcuttan is right by Cynghordy railway station which has four trains a

Our pitch at Cwmcuttan 

day stopping here. We can just glimpse them through the trees. Otherwise there is practically no noise at all other than a yappy dog on one of the other pitches. The site is adults only due to safety issues because it has a beautiful lake with waterlilies and good sized fish. There are ducks here too and a black cat who spent the afternoon snoozing in the shade by the bins and was definitely not impressed by our driving up and disrupting siesta time!

When I say 'no noise', this isn't strictly true as the rain has been

Pitched up at Cwmcuttan 

thundering on the roof in short bursts this evening. It was gloriously hot and sunny when we arrived - can you spot Dave recovering from his intense three hours of navigator duty? - and we managed to get pitched up, lunched and had the awning all done before the clouds found us again. Part of our drive here, on a high section of the A483, necessitated us driving through low cloud for about fifteen minutes. The road was nicely windy and pretty narrow by this point and the cloud was effectively thick fog so that was fun. Fortunately we were following a large slow motorhome so I could just hang back and see which direction their tail lights swung to judge the next bend in the road.

We are forecast lots more rain this week and are planning to stay holed up here until after the Bank Holiday weekend. Hopefully we will get to do some walking and sightseeing. If not, you can expect a glut of book review posts!