We leave Camping Sevinan and the ants on the morning of Saturday the 13^th heading in the direction of Valencia where at least the weather forecast appears more propitious. We’re now in the plains of the Sierra de Solorio and no sooner have we set off than dark clouds start to gather again.

We go past Carinera, Paniza, Calamocha as the rain starts lashing down and strong winds pick up. By the time we reach Villafranca and Singra the windscreen wipers can barely cope with the almighty downpour. Brenda is a high-top and is being seriously buffeted by the wind. It might be true that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain but at the moment it seems to be falling absolutely everywhere and all the time! We pass a motorcyclist who’s had to slow right down to avoid being swept off the road and we smile sympathetically at him. He smiles back through the visor in his bell helmet. I used to be a biker and know only too well how miserable it is riding in heavy rain and wind.

As we reach Torrelarcel, there’s a temporary dramatic parting of the dark clouds as lighter clouds take their place – the sky looks like something on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Maria Callas is singing La Wally by Catalani with all her soul and her divine voice adds to the dramatic effect. The motorcyclist overtakes us slowing down slightly as he does so to smile and give us a V sign (the polite one!) then he rides off – we’re too slow, pity that would have been a nice photo. The respite is only a short one however – as we arrive at Santa Eulalia, it’s looking apocalyptic again.

It’s still raining when we get to Pozondon with a sign next to it saying it’s a heritage site (‘Centro interpretacion arquitectura traditional’). Old ramshackle crumbling homesteads line the road. We drive through the village and stop briefly to take photos. Not a soul in sight. It’s like a ghost town. We drive out again having seen Pozondon but none of its inhabitants.

It’s been such a dreadful journey, we decide to stop at a campsite nearby in the Sierra de Albarracin. It’s in a place called Orhuela del Tremedal but what we don’t realize is that we’ve been gradually climbing for quite a while and Orhuela as we’re told by the Campsite owner, lies 1500m high. The site is pretty basic and we get the feeling we’re intruding on something when we arrive at the reception-cum-bar where the owner and a group of friends still seem to be finishing off a boozy lunch at 5pm. It’s a little bit fresh when we arrive and install ourselves at the very basic site.

But the temperature drops quickly. We put on a jacket and walk down and back up again into Orhuela village to try and find a restaurant. It’s a pretty looking old village from a distance but closer up, it’s clearly struggling economically. We go into a bar that looks like it could also serve food but are greeted by about 10 pairs of eyes staring unwelcomingly at us. Again that feeling that we’d interrupted something – this time, apart from the drinking, a bull-fighting tournament they were watching on the TV on the wall – honestly! We turn and go straight back out again and ask some women sitting outside where we can find somewhere that serves food – they point to the end of the road and say something about ‘ultima’. The place we find looks more promising as it says restaurant outside, but yet again, as soon as we step inside we interrupt a small group of people sitting at the bar and busy drinking – “nada comido”.

So it’s back to the campsite and that chicken consommé and tin of cassoulet we’d fortunately bought in a Carrefour City (that’s their equivalent to Tesco Express or other mini-marts) before we left France. Actually, it was just the ticket as it was staring to get quite nippy. In fact that was just the beginning –the temperature dropped so low during the night that we had to sleep fully clothed and we still froze as of course we’d left warm blankets in Brittany and had only kept thin cotton ones. The wind had also picked up again and there was a terrible cold draft in the van all night – in a word, we had an awful night and slept very badly.

The best thing for it therefore was to have a hot shower in the morning, eat some hot porridge and set off as soon as physically possible, which is what we did. The aim was to get to the warm coast around Valencia and absorb some of that Mediterranean sun at last. Maria Callas again, this time she’s singing plaintively: “Reponds a ma tendresse, reponds a ma tendresse” in Saint Saens’s Samson and Delila . We stopped at Terual as it looked nice from a distance but in fact offered nothing of any particular interest. We had in fact yet to drive through a village or small town which, as happens in France all the time, immediately looks inviting with its boulangerie, café bistrot offering the day’s ‘formule’ and obligatory little town square and mairie. We did find a café though and had a coffee and Spanish pasties.

Sagunto lies 40 kms or so north of Valencia but had been advertised as a site right by the sea with its own beach, which was just the antidote we needed to the arctic conditions of the night before. It was busy when we arrived, with quite a few children – it must be a place popular with locals at weekends. It’s warm but very windy and the sea is a bit rough but this doesn’t deter us and we’re soon in the water after setting ourselves up. The site is more like a caravan park and is very settled – there seem to be a few people there who are more or less permanently encamped and have enlarged their encampments with additional tents, small caravans, awnings and plants and little gardens. There are also permanent ‘casitas’ on the site complete with small inner courtyards surrounded by bright red and white bougainvilleas.

After an early dinner of pesto pasta and good catch-up with the blog, we set off again in the morning for a quick tour of Valencia before heading to our next destination – Cartagena just south west of Murcia, avoiding the busier holiday destinations of Alicante, Benidorm etc on the coast.

Valencia immediately strikes us as a very appealing and vibrant city. The trouble we encounter, as happened in other places, is that all the car parks we see signs to are underground and have a height restriction of 2m or 2.2m maximum, which is too low for the high-topped Brenda who is 2.5m. After finding ourselves going round the city centre for the third time and trying unsuccessfully to fit in the one parking space on the road we could find, we abandon the idea of stopping and content ourselves again with just a drive around the city. It’s a pity as it looked like a very agreeable place to stop at for a coffee or a bite to eat and to explore further and the weather was perfect. Still, at least we know we like it and will come back again sometime in the future. The central Plaza was particularly beautiful.