Motorhome Wheels Turn to Embalse de la Vinuela

Zagan the motorhome is in shock. He has moved! After not turning a wheel for over a month he found himself rudely awakened on Saturday morning and pointed north to Camping Rural Presa La Vinuela (N36.87369, W4.18500). The site is tiered so we look over the roof of our neighbours and out across the Embalse de la Vinuela (reservoir) to rocky mountains, crowned by the 2069m high La Maroma (The Rope, named after the rope locals used to extract ice from a huge crack at the summit prior to the availability of freezers). In fact, looking at the map, these mountains are part of the same Reserva Nactional de Sierra de Tejeda that Jay was running around in while we were in Nerja – so we haven’t moved all the far.

We had become so nicely settled in Nerja, it was a tough decision to leave. We’d booked into the campsite for a month to see if we would be happy in one place for that long, and because you got a much cheaper rate – €400 per month as opposed to €25 a night. Our month passed easily with running and hiking in the surrounding nacional parques, visiting the caves, wreck snorkeling, eating out and enjoying getting to know somewhere. We got to experience the Carnaval and watch the locals take to their bikes to celebrate Andalusia Day.

Once our month was up we had a discussion and decided to stay until we needed to move to Malaga for the half marathon in another three weeks. We were happy running and chilling out reading in the sunshine, so why did we leave? Well it’s hard to explain. We had done ‘the sights’ – Frigiliana, the Rio Chillar river walk, the caves and we even visited neighbouring resorts and now we were living our lives there in the sunshine instead of in the never ending storms back home. It seemed like a no-brainer to stay. Then slowly our feet started to itch.

At first it was just a feeling of, should we be doing something else. It was easily dismissed. Then it became a slight feeling of guilt that we were not making the most of our time. This wasn’t quite so easy to dismiss, after all we only have so many hours on this planet. Each time one of us would feel a draw to leave we’d talk about it, and unsurprisingly we were both having the same feelings. A decision was reached to leave next Tuesday – just a random day that was picked so we could get anything we’d been putting off done. Instead of increasing our itchy feet, knowing we’d be heading off to exciting new places, Nerja shone, reminding us that it had everything we wanted in a place to stay.

The sunset was even more intensely colourful than it had been before, the town itself was starting to come to life after the winter with restaurants and shops reopening. Knowing I had only managed 16 of the 40 flavours at my ice cream parlour of choice (Albi, in case you are visiting – try the chocolate orange one) also meant I’d have a lot of eating to do over the next few days. As we sat on a bench by the beach we decided hanging around until Tuesday would be too hard. Everything would end up being ‘our last’… our last cheap pizza at Little Italy, our last sunset on the Balcon Europa, my last run along the river etc. So we agreed, like a sticking plaster it’s better to rip it off fast than to peel it slowly. The following morning we packed up Zagan, said farewell to everyone, stocked up on avocados from the campsite honesty box and hit the road.

Our neighbours came out to say farewell, I think they were as shocked as we were. The campsite owner gave me handfuls of avocados as we left, so we now have enough to see us through until the half marathon – and we’ve had instructions how to speed up and slow down ripening so hopefully they won’t all need eating a once. After a quick stock up in a packed Lidl (in all the rush we forgot that we don’t do supermarkets at the weekend for a good reason), we got onto the motorway and 30 minutes later we arrived at Embalse de la Vinuela.

We could so easily have stayed in Nerja and been happy, but now we have two weeks to explore a bit more of Andalusia before we have to be in Malaga. We chose not to go too far on our first day, it was more a case of getting away from the campsite, then finding somewhere to plan where to go next. It turned out to be a good job because when I jumped out of Zagan to check us into the campsite at Vinuela I could smell brakes. Jay checked and one of the back wheels was hot, it seems that the long stay had caused his brake to cease on. We’ve chocked the wheels and have the handbrake off, hoping it will sort itself without the help of a mechanic.

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk along the edge of the reservoir and talked about how good it feels to back on the road again. We are so fortunate to have the lives we have, happy to be at home, happy to be on the road, and happy to stay put for a month if we want to. This morning we were back on our running training. The reservoir is 24km (ish – depending on water levels) in diameter, so Jay ran around it, twice. While I had a jog down to the dam to take some snaps.

Tomorrow we’ll move on. We’re not sure where yet as our map already has quite a lot of scribbles on it from previous trips around here. Watch this space…

Ju x