{"id":38697,"date":"2020-10-22T12:09:31","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T11:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=38697"},"modified":"2020-10-22T13:01:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T12:01:48","slug":"on-hayling-island-next-stop-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/on-hayling-island-next-stop-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"On Hayling Island, Next Stop Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a> on Hayling Island (N50.783165, W0.956844<\/a>). 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our pitch at Fishery Creek Touring Park, Hayling Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Two sides of the campsite are up against a tidal creek, which completely fills at high tide, it’s cool!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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 \u00a3700), 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<\/a> – who sponsor this blog – and yes, they sent us one on request).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’ve got a new bike cover after the last one was eaten by the sun and wind. We need the striped signal board to be legal in Spain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And we’re off!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Hayling Island Tourist Train<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Parking for the Beachlands fun fair. Nope, motorhomes not allowed!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All along the beach there are pay-and-display car parks at about \u00a37.20 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A relic of war, the concrete section of a Mulberry Harbour off Hayling Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A curious-looking house boat in the Kench Nature Reserve, Hayling Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the many information boards – this one for the Sinah Gun Site on Hayling Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we’ve been in the van we’ve tested out our new Superdrug Mobile SIM<\/a>, using it to watch TV through our Amazon Fire TV Stick. We demonstrated this set-up in Switzerland<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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