We're on the road again! Our journey in search of sunshine....

Bourges cathedral catching the last rays of the evening sun

It's Wednesday afternoon and we're camped up on a Camperstop in Platja D'Aro a Spanish seaside resort on the Costa Brava, outside its cloudy and only 9°c, maybe not quite what we were expecting! But, this morning the sun came out for a while and it was definitely warmer so there's hope for us yet!

We left home on Saturday with an incredibly easy journey through the tunnel and then we made our way south travelling mainly toll-free staying on camperstops along the way.

We certainly felt like we had swapped the cold, wet weather of the UK for the even colder, windy, snowy weather of France! 

We pushed the heating system in the motorhome to its limits and sadly found it lacking when we had to snuggle up in blankets in the evening to keep warm.

On Monday night we stopped over at Millau, near to the massive Viaduct and during  the night we turned off the heating, when we woke up in the morning it was 2°c in the van, our breath turning to steam in the air - we stayed snuggled up warm in our bed until the room temperature was a bit more acceptable! 

Still we are reasonably hardy souls so we were still able to enjoy the quieter route down through France passing through the typically French sleepy villages and towns. I always admire the effort the French (and Spanish) put into their roundabouts often having a theme relevant to their particular town or area, I wish we would do the same on our roundabouts in the UK it would make our journeys so much more interesting!

This journey has been different for us having invested during the winter in a gas system in our motorhome (called Gaslow) where we can fill up with gas for cooking, heating and hot water at any petrol station which sells LPG. What this means for us is we don't have to worry about running out of gas and not being able to exchange our UK cylinders. We can now stay quite happily in places which have little or no facilities for motorhomes, which is particularly useful at this time of year when most of the campsites are closed. 

Platja D'Aro promenade

We had planned to stop for a while in the south of France but as the weather was so chilly we decided to push on into Spain and here we are! We found this Camperstop more by luck than judgement and would you believe it is right on a Via Verde! So tomorrow the bikes are off the back of the van and we will head out with our packed lunch to do what we love the best - cycling on the Via Verde ( disused railway route) 

Sadly things didn't turn out as expected when our leisure battery ran down later that evening and we had to make hasty plans to move on in order to recharge the battery - luckily the main battery for starting the engine is unaffected by us using power inside the motorhome so we had now worries the next morning (Thursday) but we had no power to watch TV or run the heating ( we kept warm by using the gas cooker oven!)  It was disappointing that we couldn't cycle the Via verde but we made a mental note to return one day to cross it off our list!

After another of our 'planning meetings' we decided to head to a campsite just south of Barcelona.

I didn't take any photos of roundabouts in France but here are two Spanish roundabouts

Next stop - Barcelona!