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<\/a>After about a week of rain and grey skies, recent days have been glorious here at Nerja on the Costa del Sol. Yesterday was our warmest winter day yet in the months we’ve been here, cranking all the way up to about 24\u00b0C, with wall to wall blue sky. The Factor 50, sunglasses and hat went on and I escaped into the hills while Ju went on a rampage cleaning Zagan. We’re just 100 miles north of Africa here and desert sand falls with the infrequent rain, adding a slight orange hue to the windscreen and table outside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Neighbouring Torrox has a big sign alongside the road proclaiming it has the best climate in Europe and our experience of winter weather here has been very good, warm and mainly sunny with a few spells of overcast days, wind and rain here and there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with the wonderful weather the COVID-19 figures have continued to bobble along the bottom of the graph. Only 4 people have tested positive in the town over the past 14 days. Nearby Frigiliana has had 0 positive tests in 14 days, as have several of the smaller municipalities around us. Over 300,000 of the Andalusian population have had both vaccine doses, and over 1m doses have been given in total (around 8.5m people live in Andalusia, so there’s quite some way to go yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chatting with friends and family back home, this all seems a little odd. The gyms, hairdressers, shops and schools have stayed open here this winter, as have the bars and restaurants, albeit with reduced capacity and early closing times. Life is far from normal I should add, the fact everyone has a mask on reminds of us that whenever we step off our pitch, but I suspect we’ve managed to miss the worst of this (hopefully) final lockdown by being here. In a way, the gamble has paid off, we had no idea when we came out in Oct 2020<\/a> whether we’d find ourselves confined to our pitch for months, and we haven’t. With no garden and a relatively small room to live in at home, we felt the risk worth taking for us, personally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomorrow it will have been a full year since we turned tail and fled for home from Spain at the start of the pandemic. It’s a little embarrassing looking back, just how naive we were. We’d met Linda and Steve (thechouters.com<\/a>) at Cadiz a few days before the world blew up (blog post here<\/a> – this was the last time the world felt normal). They’d just come back from Morocco, which turned out to be great timing as thousands of others were stranded there for months when the Spain-Morocco border closed, and it still hasn’t re-opened. We chatted about the pandemic, which they were far more concerned about and prepared for than us. I recall we were focussed at the time on whether the half marathon in Malaga would go ahead later in March, ha! <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time we looked at stats for China’s COVID-19 numbers, and they seemed to have the whole thing under control in 3 weeks, which is what we were expecting to happen in Europe too. After receiving confirmation that the half marathon was postponed until November we decided to continue heading south, even further from the UK. Whoops. On the way south we got our first taste of panic in the local population with packed supermarkets, shelves emptied of food, trollies abandoned half full of food, staff looking bewildered. The marina aire in Barbate didn’t exactly look palatial but we had access to services and a supermarket, and figured we could sit it out there for a couple of weeks (having no clue that in reality that would mean weeks being confined to the van). We were completely blind as to what was about to hit us, but then so was most of the world, so I don’t suppose we feel too bad about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some ‘youfs’ did us a favour on our first night at the marina aire, making a half-hearted attempt to nick the bikes in the early hours and then hitting the side of the van, breaking one of the side habitation windows (\u00a3500 to fix, ouch<\/a>) and running off. That spooked us, and I started to fear social unrest was on the way, which spurred us into action to get home sharpish. A few days later we’d blasted across a continent<\/a> and were home, wiped out, bewildered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back at that first time we returned back in March 2020, it felt chaotic in the UK. The streets were full and pubs doing a brisk business as we drove home (the UK went into lockdown a few days later). There was no requirement to quarantine even, and we got the odd raised eyebrow when we locked ourselves in for 14 days as though we were over-egging the whole thing (that turned out to be absolutely the right thing to do). This time around we’ll each take 3 COVID tests before we’re ‘allowed out’, complete a tracking form and have to isolate by law for at least 10 days. Word is official phone calls and even police visits are being used to enforce quarantine. Other than our sense of freedom we don’t have anything which pushes us to break the law – no jobs to go to, no dog to walk, and no kids to get to school – so we’ve no problem with another 10 days locked in behind our gates. However it does mean it’s an extra 10 days before we can see family and friends, that will be the hard part. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You might have heard of the acclaimed film Nomadland, a fiction directed by Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, based on the non-fiction book<\/a> written by Jessica Bruder. We both read the book last year and were reminded of it by an email from some friends who also have a motorhome, and by Kevin and Ruth who watched it recently<\/a>. It’s been a while since I read it, and I’m working from my sieve-like memory, so please excuse anything I’ve gotten wrong. My sense from the book was similar to Kevin and Ruth’s: one of sadness. The writer followed a group of modern-day nomads in North America, focussing on a subset who were forced into living in caravans, vans, RVs and even cars by financial need, effectively driven into poverty by divorce or healthcare bills, or having lost their houses and jobs after the 2008 Great Recession. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the protagonists seemed to hitch their fate to ‘the economy’, some were shocked when house prices fell for example, somehow they’d been led to expect their homes would steadily increase in value. Some lost large amounts invested in shares, through their pensions for example. This saddens me personally, as these kinds of market dips are entirely normal in our capitalist world, and I sensed with more financial education many of the forced nomads in the book would have flourished. I can’t recall the author making any mention of this possibility, that folks who might befall a similar fate in future could prepare themselves better for it, rather than relying on ‘the uncaring economy’ and hoping for the best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The unlucky folks in the book were subsequently preyed upon by the ‘gig economy’, forced into working under poor conditions for relatively little money and no job security. The writer talked a lot about Camperforce, an initiative by Amazon to recruit thousands of seasonable semi-retired\/unable-to-retire motorhomers in their massive distribution warehouses. The work sounded hard (as warehouse\/factory work tends to be from my distant memory of it) and the pay low, and not something I’d relish in my 60s or 70s. The book had an uplifting element to it too, illustrating how the people involved refused to give up and supported one another through virtual and physical meet-ups (sometimes thousands of RVs would come together). I get the sense the film might have shone a brighter light on this aspect than the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having spent the past decade (on and off) travelling Europe in motorhomes, and not having needed to work while we travelled<\/a>, I’m probably not in the best position to see how the book translates to nomadic life on this continent. Maybe the equivalent over this side of the pond is the ‘vanlife’ movement. Vanlifers are a subset of motorhome travellers who mostly use panel vans, sometimes self-converted, and who tend to travel on a shoestring budget and stay away from campsites and paid aires, epitomised by folks like vandogtraveller<\/a> perhaps? Although thinking about it, this group tend to be very internet-savvy, earning money from vlogging, writing books and other ‘digital nomad’ efforts, few of them seem to be ‘retirement age’. So maybe these guys are a bad example, and there simply is no large-scale equivalent of aged nomadic van-dwellers in Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What does this all say about America I wonder? I think that’s the point of the book, to ask the question why large numbers of people are being forced into a lifestyle they have to endure, whereas almost everyone we meet living this way embraces it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lithium batteries (LiFePO4) seem to be cropping up everywhere at the moment, ever since our neighbours chatted with us about their plans for swapping their lead-acid batteries for them. Darran, of The Urban Motorhome fame, recently had Lithium Iron fitted by Oaktree Motorhomes<\/a>, only a mile or so from where we live in the UK (dealer website<\/a>), and the latest edition of the free The Motorhome Fun Magazine<\/a> has two good articles about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They’re an interesting prospect these batteries. They seem to be the future for motorhomes, a much better technology than the lead-acid ones almost all of us currently use as leisure\/deep-cycle batteries. They’re lighter (about half the weight so use up less payload), last longer (up to ten times longer), can be charged\/discharged more quickly and stay charged for longer when not being used. They can also be regularly discharged down to 90% of their capacity, whereas lead-acid ones don’t take kindly to be taken below 50%, so you effectively double your capacity with Lithium Iron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s not to like? Well, two things are a tad unpalatable for me personally:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we were spending a lot of time off-grid, especially during a UK winter when solar PV gains will be low, and if we weren’t driving very far to get much charge from the engine, Lithium starts to make financial sense to me. There isn’t just the financial aspect to all of this of course, there’s pure convenience and, shock horror, even the fun of getting new technology. With a Lithium system we’d (probably) spend far less time prodding the ‘voltage’ indicator in Zagan, and might even upsize our 300W inverter to a 1KW one and start using more mains equipment while off-grid, our Remoska, a mains slow-cooker, coffee machine and a blender maybe. For the time being, especially while we’re spending long periods on campsites, we don’t need Lithium, but it’s something we’ll keep an eye on in future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our ferry from Santander is booked for 31 March 2021, the last day we can legally be in Schengen. Ju has booked our COVID-19 antigen tests for a couple of days beforehand at a clinic in Santander, and we should get the results within a few hours. We need to book our UK test kits before we board the boat, which we’ll do in the next few days as we need info from these to complete our Passenger Locator Forms. As things stand, it’s looking unlikely Spain will get added to the UK’s ‘red list’ of countries which require mandatory hotel quarantine, so we’ll probably be isolating at home. Stuart, who was also staying on the site here in Nerja, recently did the journey home, staying at a couple of aires on the way north through Spain. He reported seeing very few other motorhomes and had the aires to himself, and the process has worked smoothly for him so we’re hopeful we’ll have the same experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re also hopeful the vaccination programme will open up to our age group (we’re both 48) as soon as possible, so we can get our first jabs and start to build some immunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All being well, the UK will go to Step 2 in the lockdown easing roadmap on 12 April, around the time we come out of quarantine. This will see the campsites and pubs (outdoors only) re-open, as well as gyms, shops and libraries. Small gatherings (maximum of 6 people or two households) will have already been allowed from 29 March, again all being well, allowing us to see our friends and families outside. Hopefully our running club will have restarted the small group outdoor sessions they created last summer, so we’ll be able to exercise with our clubmates again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although life here in Nerja has been good to us this winter, we’re looking forward to coming home. We drove here almost five months ago. Although we came home for a few weeks after mum’s death, this is by far the longest we’ve stayed still at one location. Nerja has proved everything we’d hoped for, with the combination of sea views, open-air restaurants, mountain walks and hikes, the pueblo blanco of Frigiliana and the cracking climate. New Zealand aside, this is probably one of the best places we could have been in winter 2020-21, but spring’s on its way and we’re ready to head for home. From past experience, the sudden immersion in clouds and cold air is a shock to the system, but we quickly get used to it and relish the (albeit initially constrained) contact we can have with people at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ve had a decent amount of rain recently (for Nerja, it’s been practically summer weather compared to back home) and water pooled on the van roof leading to a drip from our main skylight winder handle. I’ve been up on the roof to have a look at the skylight to try and spot why\/where it’s leaking. It looks like the mastic (almost 20 years old now) has ceased to be masticy enough, and is allowing water to get past it either around the surround or at the point the winder pops through the roof. I’ve had a crack at a silicon field repair, but the edge of the surround isn’t really accessible along two sides and around the winder, and the whole thing needs to come off, be cleaned up and resealed. We’re nervous about doing that here, in case we break something and can’t get a part in time for our return. Instead we’ll get the van on a slight slope for when it rains so water doesn’t pool on the roof. We’ll then get the mastic, alcohol cleaning wipes and other bits and bobs when we’re back home and take our time doing the job after we’ve quarantined. The fridge, on the other hand, seems to have started working fine on gas. We did a test for a few hours and it stayed lit, so we’ll test it again before we leave here and hope for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had a walk up to Frigiliana last Wednesday and as our favourite restaurant is closed mid-week, we nipped into another one which looked like a local’s place and advertised having menu del dia, Spain’s low-cost daytime three course meal. No price was given and the menu was read out then handed over as this hand-written note below, so we had a bit of a guess at what we’d have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Pandemic Nerja<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>A Year On Since We Fled for Home<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Nomadland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nLithium Batteries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThoughts of Home<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>And in other news…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n