Yesterday evening Sarah couldn’t resist the lure of IKEA any longer. Off she trotted but a couple of hundred metres from our overnight stop. She returned with some hooks which are supposed to stick to a smooth surface by suction. We could always do with new hooks to hang things on in Basil, but try as we might every time we stuck a hook to the wall a few minutes later there would be a soft thud as it fell off the wall and hit the floor. They even wouldn’t stick to our mirror. But now an extra hook proudly sprouts from the wall of our shower and hasn’t (yet) fallen off. The problem is we don’t really need any hooks in the shower!

Basil was filled and emptied at the aire adjacent to our overnight stop in Murcia and we were then on our way to the coast. In about one and a half hours driving on empty motorways we reached Aguilas on the coast. I had information from one of the forums that the coast south of Aguilas is relatively unspoilt with plenty of wild camping opportunities.

As we started to drive south I was alarmed to see the number of motorhomes on some of the official aires. There seemed to be hundreds of them and I feared we would not find anywhere to stay. Fortunately the wildcamping spot we were heading for still had one or two spaces left, albeit that the remaining ones were at a bit of an angle.

So we parked up, had lunch and got out our chairs. Getting chairs out is strictly speaking forbidden when wildcamping, but there are about 20 other vans on this spot and their occupants were all sunning themselves in their chairs.

We are parked literally next to a beach and I can hear the waves lapping the shore as I type. For the first time this trip I’m in my shorts and apart from a walk along the beach we have been reading and sunbathing.

Southern Spain is turning out to be a real contrast to the other parts of Europe we have toured in Spring. France, Italy, northern Spain and Greece are all empty of motorhomes at this time of year but Southern Spain is packed and I’m not sure I like it. For one thing the quantity of motorhomes sometimes attracts the police who sporadically move wild campers on, probably at the behest of local campsite owners. I know it happens at this location occasionally I just hope not today!

You may wonder why we wild camp or free camp as it might be more accurately described. One reason is that if there is no official aire in a town we want to explore then we have no real alternative. But in cases like today, although it is partly about not paying, it is more to do with the fact that we virtually never find a campsite where we can park right next to a beach and wake to the sound of breaking waves.