From Apocalypse Now to Camperstop Totana

Zagan the motorhome’s warming up folks. It’s 10:42am in Totana, Murcia (Spain), and our thermometer says it’s 25°C in here. It’s a tad cooler outside, probably about 10°C, but the sun’s carving its way across a pale blue sky over the hills below us, and it’s heading for a high of 17°C today, not bad for mid February? We’re in a new(ish) camperstop about 2 miles from Totana in Murcia, about a 30 min drive from the Med (N37.79275, W1.50987). It’s a whole €7 a night to stay, which includes good WiFi which I’m using to punt this out to you.

“Drove in slowly drove out in haste. Thought i was on a Vietnam war film set” Once my eyeballs alighted on this particular comment on park4night.com, the aire it referred to near Yecla (N38.71444, W1.11952) became almost irresistible. Having read the other reviews, it was clear the place as a bit unusual, set in a remote location on an arid plain, with lots of random bits of stuff scattered about. My guess is this particular review was referencing Apocalypse Now, which itself is loosely based on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. In both pieces, an official’s gone completely power mad in the far upper reaches of a river and a long and dangerous journey has to be undertaken to stop him. In our case, the maverick was a nice German bloke called Franze, and although a little eccentric with an abstract sense in sculpture, he didn’t exactly qualify as a murderous madman. The journey was uneventful, not a single spear or bullet came our way.

The drive to the stop, like many of our later drives in Spain seem to be, consisted of a combination of empty free dual carriageway followed by a few miles of back B road. This one needed a final quick bounce across a few hundred meters of dirt track to get us properly into the middle of nowhere though, reminding us of some of our stops in Morocco (like the one the motorhome got stuck in the river), which it was kind of meant to, it turned out. Markus, a young (compared to us) German chap in a campervan, came over to tell us Franze had headed into the city to get supplies for a paella he was cooking for everyone. When Franze re-appeared later on (whiffing a tad fragrantly I can’t help but add – water’s in short supply out there I guess), he told us he’d planned to settle in South Africa, but had bought the camper stop a couple of years earlier as it felt like Morocco to him (which is obviously at the other end of Africa, but we can only assume some bits of Morocco feel like some bits of South Africa?).

By that point we’d looked around and settled in to the site no problemo. If you were expecting a ‘normal’ campsite or aire, you’d be a bit taken aback, for sure. An ironic Traffic Jam warning site stands at the site entrance, next to a dressed dummy sat staring at you. Scattered around are bits and bobs of paraphernalia out in the open, a globe drinks cabinet, a log with an assortment of random items hanging from it (which now includes our friend’s Cancer Council Australia teddy bear), a selection of caravans painted bright blue and yellow, some makeshift buildings, signs in various languages welcoming you and offering to fetch your shopping or cook you breakfast, another log with signs nailed to it urging you to be grateful for the life you have. Not to everyone’s taste, but we liked it. That said, although we’ve ‘dropped out’ of ‘normal life’, the feel of the place was relaxed and welcoming, but we still like to be a part of the wider world I think, and this location was just too isolated for us to stay for long.

The only problem, if there was one, was the fact it was fully, fully MFN. We have a nightclub near our home in the UK called MFN, which the latest owners claim stands for ‘Miles From Nowhere’, but we know the real expletive-sandwich words behind the letters, and this camperstop is fairly seriously MFN. It’s surrounded by nothing but blossom-laden almond trees and wizened olive trees, clumps of tough grass, rock and earth and the odd farmhouse devoid of life for miles on end. The attraction is Franze, I suspect, a sort of modern hippy, someone who’s dropped right out and right into something which appears to suit him well. I can’t say I spoke with him much, so I’ll try and avoid speculation, but my feeling is he loved being free to do what he wanted with the place, to cook for people (we enjoyed a lovely paella brought to our van, like they do with tagines in Morocco) and be far, far, far from the madding crowd. I liked his style.

An almost full moon spoiled our chances of the best star gazing in years, and the temperature dipped down to -2°C that night. In the morning we opted to roll on here, having chatted with Markus some more, who introduced us to the term ‘bush shitter’. Hah! It seems the world of motorhomes and campervans are a little apart, and this term’s used to refer to those ‘vanlifers’ who have no loo aboard. Markus, who runs an adventure park in Hanover for 7 months of the year, was keen to tell us he has suitable facilities and although he and his wife had free camped their way across Spain and Portugal for a few weeks, they were definitely not ‘bush shitters’. We nodded. He then told us about some of his favourite stops, and some of his less favourite ones which sounded like hippy communes where folks sat about in a cloud of whacky baccy chucking their rubbish over their shoulders. Different world to ours.

Our travel planning is becoming more and more of a farce these days, as we’re frankly not much bothered where we are much of the time. We have great lives, we’re healthy and happy, and have seen so many places we’re nothing like as driven to, well, drive, as we used to be. Our only ‘destination’ as such for this trip is Córdoba to see La Mezquita (the mosque turned cathedral). I’d like to see the El Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) Spanish Civil War monument near Madrid too. So we ended up here on a recommendation: it’s a lovely camper stop, it’s only €7 a night to stay, it has nice views over the surrounding hills, and there are great walks (runs for us) up into the Sierra Espuña behind me. Totana is about a 3km walk/ride down back roads, and seemed a pretty work-a-day kind of place to us. We looked at the tile signs (which the town’s reknown for), watched a hundred nippers leaving church clutching their RE schoolbooks, ate some ice cream, bought a stamp (Ju did this all in Spanish – huzzah!) and walked back here, being barked at by the usual array of ferocious dogs thankfully constrained by rusting fences!

Today we’re planning on doing the washing, Ju’s been for a run and I’ll get some S+C done later on (strength and conditioning – lunges and squats and stuff). Other than that it’s a simple Tuesday, a slow life in the sunshine.

Cheers, Jay