An undiscovered part of Spain.....

Have you ever heard of the Spanish resort of Chipiona? No? Well, neither had we, it's a real hidden gem of a resort.

It's a lovely seaside town at the northernmost tip of the Costa de Luz about 50 miles north of Cadiz. 

We travelled here after arriving on the coast a few days before, having spent a few nights on a couple of rather non-descript campsites along the coast, being brought here for our sixth Via Verde - the Entre Rio.

The town itself is very typically Spanish with lots of whitewashed houses, a smattering of low rise hotels and long streets full of tapas bars and little shops selling all sorts of goods from shoes and handbags to bazaar shops with their baskets and plastic flowers.

The skyline is dominated by a very tall and elegant lighthouse. The beach is golden sand with a wide promenade and plenty of beachside bars to suit all tastes.

There are tourists, but these are mainly  Spanish so the town maintains its typical Spanish atmosphere. 

We were pleased to find our camperstop was right on the seafront- the sound of the waves lulling us to sleep at night. And once again the Via Verde was just a few hundred yards down the road.

We planned to cycle out on the trail the day after we arrived but unfortunately our gas bottle gauge went from 2/3 full to almost empty overnight so we had to decide what to do - we needed gas to keep our fridge running. 

Using an app called Park4night we located a place nearby where we could go, a small campsite where we had most importantly, electric hookup but also wifi, water toilets and showers - perfect!  And it was located just down the road from the Via verde and a few steps away from the beach. The owner Alfonso was incredibly friendly and helpful he went out of his way to get us a gas cylinder from a local company, but sadly it wouldn't fit in the van cabinet so it didn't solve the problem. It's a funny thing that across Europe gas bottles are not standardised which makes it very difficult to obtain an exchange - our only answer was to have our cylinder refilled and as luck would have it John and Gill had told us about a place on the Spain/Portugal border. We had planned to go
along the coast to Portugal so it was an option to seek out this place on our way there over the next week.

Anyway, enough of the trials and tribulations of motorhoming!

We set out on Thursday morning along Via Verde Entre Rio and cycled the whole length of it to the lovely town of Rota - another lovely Spanish seaside resort - we really have found an undiscovered corner of Spain ( but please don't tell too many people about it!)

The trail took us through mainly agricultural land with lots of greenhouses full of horticultural plants and the two main crops being sweet potato and cotton - I never realised cotton wool balls grew on plants (!) We also enjoyed our first Via Verde which had a hard surface for it's entire length of 13 miles.

We enjoyed this area of Chipiona so much we decided to stay for a while......

Our favourite place for dos cafe americano