23rd January 2017. San Juan de los Terreros, Spain.

There was a wonderful sunrise this morning, I walked along the beach and ended up having an unintentional paddle when a particularly keen wave rushed up the beach and over my feet.  It was a strange sensation, the water felt fluffy like the water from an aerated tap. As I walked back to the van with hundreds of totally unnecessary photos of waves in my camera (I really must get a grip)  the beautiful old dog came out to lay on the beach so I greeted him as I passed.

After breakfast we got together with Jane and Steve to make a plan for the day.  It was a chilly day so we decided to head off to look for another place to stop further South.  Our first port of call was going to be a couple of miles down the road, some natural sand sculptures caused by erosion.

It was sad to leave our camping spot, it had been so nice being able to just wander on to the beach and to be able to see the breakers through the van windscreen.

We arrived at the sand sculptures around 10.30 a.m.  They weren’t quite what we’d expected, we thought they were going to be on the beach and we thought there were going to be more of them but nevertheless they were a sight to behold.  It would be great to know why those particular areas of sandstone were able to withstand the ravages of the elements.  How come they hadn’t been washed away like all the sandstone that had surrounded them?

We only stayed there for a short while mainly because the car park was rather claggy and we were a bit concerned that our vans would end up stuck there.  I did find time to have a little chat with a British man who was walking his shaggy dog there, his dog looked quite spritely considering he told us it was 14 years old.  He told us he and his wife had rented an apartment for 4 months but as the weather was a bit rubbish he was starting to wish he’d gone somewhere warmer.  Hopefully the weather will pick up for him and for us.

We decided to make our way further down the coast and we headed to San Juan de Torres.  Steve and Jane obviously didn’t learn from last time and they agreed that Darren should lead the way as he’d already put the route in the SAT NAV.  As a consequence instead of going straight there down the motorway we did a windy route through the beautiful national park, up and down steep hills.

We drove past loads of beautiful bays where a few motorhomes were parked up overlooking the sea, we’d have loved to have stopped but we’d said we’d go to the aire at San Juan so we carried on up the road into the town until we came to the aire which turned out to be a car park!  Jane told us later that each time we’d come to a bay they had said “Ooh, it must be here” then “Oh” as we’d sailed past that beautiful parking area, they got excited every time we came to one and as we eventually drove into the town Steve said “Apparently not then!”  After a conflab we realised we were at the wrong place so drove another couple of minutes up the road to the aire but it looked pretty busy and the road down to it looked very steep so we had another conflab, returned the way we’d come (letting Steve lead the way this time) and went back to one of the bays where we parked overlooking the sea.

We went for a short stroll along the beach and came to a quiet sheltered bay so Jane suggested we went back to the vans to get a picnic together and then returned there for lunch. W e did just that and it was lovely, mind you the sun did keep finding clouds to hide behind which was quite an achievement considering there were vast expanses of blue cloudless sky!

It started to get a bit chilly so when we’d finished eating we packed up and went back to the vans.  As we’d left for the picnic a German registered van had pulled up next to us and as we returned a lady popped out to say hello.  Darren replied “Guten tag” and then realised that she was speaking English.  It turned out that she and her husband were British but they had a house in Germany!

They were lovely, we stood and chatted for ages and then Steve, her husband, suggested that we got our chairs out and carried on chatting.  So we all brought out some drinks and nibbles, Steve (Judy’s husband) brought out a game of swing ball which he and Jane’s Steve played and we sat outside chatting for ages.  Steve and Judy mentioned the Spanish hot chocolate that they’d bought and we took photos of the labels just before we all called it a day as it started spitting with rain. As I got back to our van I remembered we’d got a big bag of cacao so I made some hot chocolate and Jane and Steve came over to part take!  We had such a wonderful day.