On Hayling Island, Next Stop Spain
Zagan the motorhome’s stood on a gravel pitch surrounded by lush grass, a few fellow motorhome travellers and seasonal caravans at Fishery Creek Touring Park on Hayling Island (N50.783165, W0.956844). We’ll be making the 30-minute drive over to the ferry port at Portsmouth tomorrow, for our ferry at 5pm to Santander in Cantabria, northern Spain.
Although we still had three days to wait for the ferry on Friday, rumours were starting to circulate around Nottinghamshire being pushed into Tier 3 restrictions in the coming days, which pushed us into moving a little faster. We were in limbo land anyway, knowing that we were committed to go (ferry tickets and insurance came to over £700), so we might as well get uprooted and break the chains. On Tuesday morning we cycled to the storage place and loaded the bikes onto the rack, then drove to our nearby Sainsbury’s, the closest place we can park without risking a ticket. We’d partially packed the van in the preceding days, but still had about eight bags of stuff to carry through our small town to the van – laptops, TV, fridge stuff, my favourite pillow, shoes and the like – looking like a couple of hobos. At one point we got a message from the chap who manages our shop for us (also an insurance broker) saying he’d seen us walking past his window piled high with bags and wanted to check we’d remembered to get a Green Card from our insurer (Safeguard – who sponsor this blog – and yes, they sent us one on request).
Once we’d checked the tyre pressures, brimmed with diesel and refilled the LPG bottles we hit the M1 south. The drive here was pretty easy, about four hours avoiding a closed section of motorway, with a stop-off in the services to satiate Ju’s craving for a last-minute burger and fries. Something *always* goes a bit wrong when we start these tours, and this time we had our satnav going nuts every five minutes (easily solved as we switched to using Co-Pilot navigation on our phone) and a slipping wing mirror – not bad – better than the wipers conking out in the rain on the M20 that time! Being left hand drive, I tend to use the passenger mirror a lot when we’re in the UK, for overtaking mainly. It’s mounted on a pole and wasn’t tightly-enough bolted on, so would bounce outwards leaving me with a view of the outer lanes. Ju did her best to pull it back in, but you’d need to be Mr Tickle to reach it and we ended up with her spotting for me. No fun, so I’ve had the cover off and tightened it up just now, glad to have brought my socket set with me.
It was a good feeling to be loaded up, the door to The Cooler locked and back out on the road. Ju does almost all of the prep for these things, with me just doing a few bits and bobs on the van and helping carry stuff. It’s always a long list, and with the added stress of the pandemic weighing on her, I suspect she was even more relieved than me to be finally rolling. In terms of paperwork, it’s all covered off in The Motorhome Touring Handbook except for a new Passenger Locator Form which has been introduced by Spain. We’ve printed off a couple of copies to hand one in each when we get off the ferry. They’ll also take our temperatures, although exactly when we don’t know. We’ll only know what the procedure is to return to the UK when we return, hopefully in March 2021.
We’ve been here for a couple of days now, with the weather switching back and forth between beautiful sunshine and autumn downpours. A small leak around the solar panel gland on the roof is still leaking, despite being plastered in roof repair paste (grrrrrrr!), so we’ve joked we’ll just have to go somewhere it doesn’t rain (like Andalusia!). While it’s rained, we’ve been completing our latest book, which we’ve worked on throughout the lockdown, covering the full details of how we retired at 43, and how we now manage our finances. It’s nowhere near as much fun as writing about travelling (I’m very relieved it’s finally done), but it’s an important subject nevertheless. We’ll pop up a post when Amazon finish their final quality checks.
While it’s not been raining we’ve been out walking on Hayling Island. The pebble beaches along the southern coast are about a 10-minute walk along the creek and through the streets from the site. From there we can see Portsmouth’s iconic Spinnaker Tower off in the distance, a reminder of the last time we were down here waiting for the same ferry, just back in January although it feels like years ago. We also got to see the tourist train which runs behind the beach at the weekend and on Wednesdays, carrying a handful of excited nippers and their parents.
Further along the coast we passed the Beachlands fun park, unable to work out whether it’s open or closed. Music was playing but no rides were moving and we couldn’t see anyone in there. There are a few people knocking around and the roads on the island are busy enough for October, so maybe it’s no quieter than normal at this time of year?
All along the beach there are pay-and-display car parks at about £7.20 a day. Motorhomes can access these, but the signs indicate no overnight parking. It seems a shame that some small part among the miles and miles of empty car park couldn’t be adapted to allow overnighting out of season, maybe one day?
In the end we walked all the way to the western end of the island, past the golf course with its WW2 pill boxes and warning signs of incoming round white missiles, heading north at Gunner Point and along the edge of the inlet to Langstone Harbour. There are information signs along the pathways describing the birdlife and indicating more relics of WW2, including a semi-sunken part of a Mulberry Harbour. These temporary harbours were used during D Day, constructed on Hayling Island from concrete and floated in sections across the Channel before being sunk as breakwaters off the beaches.
We were about 4 miles from the van at this point and flagging, so started to head back along the road, passing the Kench Nature Reserve and eyeballing some of the odd live-aboard boats moored on the protected shore.
Part way back we came across a final historical site, the location of anti-aircraft guns again from WW2. The signs told us fires would be deliberately lit in this area during air raids to try and draw the bombers from Portsmouth Harbour. This tactic worked at least once, when the site was bombed killing and injuring several servicemen. Once the men had been shipped off to fight abroad, ladies took over the guns, claiming a number of kills. Different times eh? We’ve all got a pandemic to deal with, but thankfully no-one’s dropping bombs on us.
Apart from wandering up and down the coast like lost souls, we’ve largely hidden from the world. A few days before we headed south we dropped a line to a farm campsite asking if they had space for us. The farmer wrote back apologising that he’d had to close, as he daren’t risk getting a track ‘n’ trace notification. That would force him to self-isolate, but he needed to be out and about caring for his animals spread around the area. It was a short note, but we felt a sadness in it. It also shook us up a little, reminding us a last-minute notification would ground us too, so we avoided our weekly running group and declined a meet up down here with fellow motorhome travellers, to ensure we can get on the boat tomorrow.
While we’ve been in the van we’ve tested out our new Superdrug Mobile SIM, using it to watch TV through our Amazon Fire TV Stick. We demonstrated this set-up in Switzerland, but haven’t used it much in the van as we were too tight with our data. Now we have an unlimited data SIM (which is completely unlimited abroad too), we’ve tried to relax and just use it like our broadband at home. Only it’s not like our broadband, it’s a fair bit faster! As we’ve a relatively slow ADSL connection at home, the 4G connection in here is roughly three times quicker. Odd, but true. Depending on what Brexit does (or doesn’t do) to roaming Internet, we might finally be in the days of low-cost, unlimited, fast data connections almost everywhere across the EU. Woo hoo!!! We did notice we’d used 6GB in an evening’s TV watching though, which seemed a bit much and we’ve since found and changed the setting to lower the quality on the stick (Settings>Preferences>Data Monitoring>Video Quality), and it’s now using much less data without us being able to tell the difference.
That’s about it folks! Ju’s headed off to find a bottle of water we can freeze overnight to help keep the fridge cool while it’s powered off during the 24 hour crossing. We’ve watched this video of someone walking around Nerja a couple of weeks ago, getting a feel for how the town is looking mid-COVID, and were surprised to see how open it looks. Everyone’s in masks almost all the time in Spain (outside their homes), unless they’re sat eating or drinking, but otherwise it looks fairly lively at the moment.
We’ve still got to get there, of course, but we’ll be almost entirely on motorway and will keep an eye on the locked-down areas to avoid stopping in any of them as we travel south. We’ve not worked out exactly where we’ll stay yet, although we probably will use the free aire in Santander for a night or two when we arrive, if we can fit in. Checking park4night.com, most aires are open and some, like the Santander one, have comments about being frequently full the past few weeks. We’ve no idea quite what to expect out there, watch this space?
Cheers, Jay
Hi guys, safe journey. I will be interested to know if site facilities are open. Also do you still have to wear a mask cycling, I think you probably do.
Hope you have a smooth crossing.
Sue
Good luck with everything… feels great to get back on the road again, doesn’t it?
Hayling Island… that brings back memories. We went on our first trip together to England back in 1983, and one of our stops was Hayling Island.
Cheers guys – happy travels in sunny Turkey! Cheers, Jay
Hello JJ,
good luck, safe travelling, generous food supply in Santander.
Perhaps we’ ll read a book in a half year time:’ Travelling in the times of Corona’!
carpe diem Heide from Herne, Germany
We hope all goes well for you in what is a constantly changing situation. Your experience and research together with your contacts should stand you in good stead. Safe travels and we look forward to reading your blogs.
Celtic Blessing
May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
You two just look so happy
You have made the right decision going south to Spain. Sounds like Nottingham will be entering into tier 3 and that won’t be fun. I hope you have a great time. And as others have said you look so happy!
Hi, We missed you, we go to Hayling Beach most days in our Autosleeper Warwick and walk the dog along the beach. Would have said hello and bought you a coffee if we had seen you. Our son and family live just round the corner from campsite.
Hope you are having a good “smooth” crossing, been rather windy here on Hayling past couple of days.
Have a great trip, looking forward to your posts.
Richard, Frankie and jack Russell “Jack”
Great to see you back on your travels. Look forward to reading the blogs.
What bike cover did you buy please. It looks to cover them well?
Hi Both, We been travelling across the north of Spain for the last 3 week (currently in Finisterre) and all the aires are open and the locals friendly. Most folk are wearing masks outside but by keeping away from the bigger towns and cities we’ve felt ok. Not a perfect situation but no at all bad considering the strange times we’re living through. Good luck with your plans. Dave & Lesley
We were spending some time in the van, hiking and biking the paths and lanes of Dorset, wondering if we could continue this after the clocks went back and the weather set in, when into my email box popped your latest about your decision to travel to Spain. Well, we thought, why not? We crossed to Bilbao on Wednesday – wonderfully smooth, hope it was for you. Driving an afternoon to Carinena, overnight aire, and a morning to Xabia it’s the quickest we’ve reached the Med! We didn’t leave the van at all but were still relieved to have arrived without being turned back in Navarra. It’s very quiet here, the campsite being about a quarter full. The town is quiet, too, but that is all to the good. Mask wearing is commonplace except on our out-of-town hikes, and cyclists generally don’t wear them. The sun is shining and we’re so glad we came and relieved not to have the pressure of seeing friends and family at home. Thank you, J & J. If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t be here now.
Great stuff, glad it’s working out for you guys! Yep, we had a good crossing too. 500km done today, Med tomorrow, pretty quick for us two! Needs must. Take care, thank you for writing, Jay
Hi Jason I take that you have travel down around Madrid ,I assume that you had no problems with passing through there, we are in France hoping to cross over into Spain by Donostia San Sebastian tomorrow but just worry about any impending travel restrictions in the north of the country
Yes Robin, we stuck to the M50 as we had (and still have) no idea whether there would be any problems closer to the center. We didn’t see any police at all. Cheers, happy travels, Jay
I am so envious of you two taking the plunge. Hope you have a safe journey through Spain. Brian.
Hiya Jay. Can’t speak for Nerja, but it’s calm where we are. Masks compulsory when you leave home (and the Guardia are cruising the streets and fining anyone not wearing them – I actually like this enforcement, makes the place feel safer). Case numbers are announced every day on the radio and, whilst I don’t really put much faith in the reported numbers (actual cases are probably higher) the numbers round here are very low. There’s a new nationwide curfew coming into play tomorrow though – no going out after 10/11/12pm (depends which region) until 6am – but I guess you’ve already heard this news. Still much better than a U.K. tier 3 scenario! Drive safe!
Safe and happy travels both and please keep the blog entries coming. Some of us are travelling vicariously through you ! Wish we were there…
Hi guys,
I’ve been a follower for a few years and just wanted to let you know that myself and my partner, plus our dog have been in Europe since early July. We basically got on the first Chunnel out of the UK!
Since then we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain & now in Portugal. Everything in Europe (apart from France) has been much better than our experiences back home. Mask wearing, hand sanitizer, traffic lights at the supermarket, arrows on the pavement showing direction of travel.
Good luck! Maybe see you in the sun for a beer!
Paul & Helen (and Beech)
Great stuff, really pleased you’re enjoying touring. 👍 Cheers, happy travels, Jay
Bonne voyage from Hayling Island
Regarding Hayling Island…. there used to be overnight motorhome parking on West Beach (only) £10 in winter, £15 in summer… but it dissappeared last year I think, maybe due to the bad beach erosion which had not been repaired… We used to spend every New Year there…. very sad, hope it may come back… Enjoy your trip, we have been following for years, Morocco, Croatia, Norway etc…. we are sadly isolating as in our 70s…
Thanks for the info Carol, thinking of you guys, my folks are having to isolate too, a tough situation I know. The best of luck and here’s to 2021 being a freer year. Jay
Thanks and good luck, you got out in time…. we are all sadly about to be locked down for a month…. or more!
HI, I understand that overnight parking was stopped due to the usual few who dumped waste and parked so close to other vans it caused a risk.
We live there, so have never had the need to park overnight, but it is a shame nothing could have been sorted. There are campsites on the Island, but not with good views like from the beach.
Richard
Or was it pressure from the campsites? We love Hayling; my grandfather lived there and we had a house there in the late 60s…. but … uch a shame….