I just had to do a brief post of this.

I THINK that’s pronounced “oop-oop-a ee-pops”. Upupa epops is the scientific/binomial name for what we commonly know as the Hoopoe and it has to be one of my absolutely favourite scientific names. Pronunciation is one of the problems with the acceptance of scientific names amongst the masses, especially, in my view, with the Brits who are notoriously rubbish at foreign languages. The Hoopoe’s call is a two or three syllable, “hoo hoo (hoo)”, which I believe gives rise to its genus name of Upupa.

Any-hoo, a few days ago when we were wending our way back along the lanes winding through the orange groves, in-between Jalon and our campsite, we did scare up a Hoopoe who settled briefly in the limbs of a bare tree before fluttering away. I use the term “fluttering” advisedly because with broad wings they have a flight reminiscent of a butterfly. Naturally, we didn’t have a camera, not that we could have deployed it in time. I was pleased to see one of these colourful characters but a picture would have been pleasing.

Yesterday fortune dealt us a better hand. Francine spotted a Hoopoe working its way along the ground of one of the paddocks just behind Frodo. They use their rather long, decurved beak to probe for grubs in the ground. I went into Frodo to get my camera out, fully expecting it to be gone by the time I returned but, no, it was still there. It was partially obscured by greenery and quickly moved in to the next paddock which was more thickly covered in vegetation, thus disappearing from view.

I waited a while and eventually thought I must have missed its departure but then glimpsed it again. It fluttered up onto the top bar of the neighbouring fence, just long enough for me to grab a couple of shots before it did, finally, decide to depart. The metal fence rail isn’t the most appealing of perches but, hey, it’s a Hoopoe, albeit a serious crop. They really do look like the most unlikely assembly of separate components but they are delightful.

We have clearly picked the wrong year to try a winter trip to Spain in our motorhome.

Our Christmas Day fell slap in the middle of a 36-hour spell of rain, a lot of which was heavy. Hence my Biblical Christmas post.

Christmas was just for starters, it seems. After New Year’s Day the Iberian peninsular began being lashed by Storm Francis, apparently named by the Portuguese. The storm worked its way across Spain to reach our neck of the woods arriving on Saturday 3rd when it started raining at 20:30. At one point on that first night, the rain was so heavy that it sounded as though buckets of water were being thrown over Frodo’s roof. In a motorhome or caravan, light rain overnight can actually be quite soothing but not so a hammering deluge.

The rain did moderate on Sunday, long enough at least for us to take a trip in our newly acquired rental car into Jalon for a tapas lunch at one of our favourite eateries, Casa Claudia. The restaurant is positioned directly opposite a road in Jalon which dips down and crosses a ford. In normal conditions the road surface is dry, the water being channelled through pipes beneath the road surface to flow downstream. The road had now been taped off to stop traffic attempting the crossing: with the pipework beneath being inadequate, a strong stream of water was gushing across the road itself. In the past, cars have been known to be washed downstream, hence the taping off. It’s amazing what some folks think they can drive through.

After 48 hours of more or less constant rain, Frodo’s roof finally fell silent during the evening of Monday 5th. Francine found a Spanish Met Office equivalent with graphics of hourly rainfall. At Pego, which seems to be the nearest weather station to our location, For the 48 hours, Francis had dumped a total of just over 60cms of rain (almost 25 inches, in old money).

The main celebration around this time of year in Spain is Three Kings Day on 6th January, though the major festivities are parades which take place on the evening of 5th when a sort of carnival follows three stalwarts dressed as the three Magi through the streets. We’ve witnessed one in Dénia several years ago, with the Three Kings first arriving in the harbour by boat, albeit a modern catamaran. The subsequent colourful procession throws out sweets for the children beside the route. The biblical rain delivered by Storm Francis caused this year’s parades in this area to be cancelled, sadly.

Fortunately, the cancelling of the Three Kings parade did not affect the supply of the Three Kings cakes, a chunk of which our very friendly Dutch neighbours presented to us. Fear not, this is the low calorie version as you can see. This was not our first sweet treat from our Dutch neighbours, the lady had previously made a batch of oliebollen (Dutch doughnuts) which she had shared with us. Oliebollen consist of a doughnut batter mixed with chopped apple and raisins. Our neighbour told us that they are a traditional New Year Eve thing in the Netherlands. It must have been quite a feat making doughnuts in a motorhome. Brava!

After our Christmas deluge, we have been treated to some dry conditions, sometimes under cloud but sometimes in sunshine. Naturally, this place looks a whole lot nicer under a blue sky. It is still cold, though, with overnight temperatures dipping to 5°C or 6°C. The daytime is climbing to the mid teens. The sun is 10° higher in the sky, here, than in the UK so, when you are in the sun, the radiant heat is very pleasant, even in the cool air.

We keep Frodo’s heating ticking over at night to help. I seem to be lucky in that the heating system is located beneath my bed – the longer of the two benches. Poor Francine’s side is noticeably cooler. I can’t offer to swap ‘cos the shorter side is just too short for me. A blanket will help.

After the disappointment of my first attempt at cooking pork secreto, we did manage to find another chunk, this time from an iberico pig, as it really should be. We still had half of the accompanying salad to use up so we tried again. This was a finer, thinner cut – presumably the pigs are smaller – and five minutes on each side made this attempt much more successful.

We have brought our cameras with us on the trip but thus far I have been wondering why. However, while I was preparing for camp duties including the joys of draining the waste water, I noticed a delightfully posed plume moth on Frodo’s driver-side door. It distracted me; I was happy to have an appealing subject for my camera. I was even happier to discover that this was a new species to me. It’s a Common Plume (Emmelina monodactyla). I have a couple of plume moths in my modest collection but not this one, despite it being our most common.

Time to welcome in the new year by changing the file names on the cameras.

Feliz año nuevo..

We are back at Heredad de Elias Ferrer, a delightful campsite that Francine discovered last year. It is now run by Octavio Ferrer, his delightful wife Susana and their son, young Octavio.

This is a relatively new venture for the family and they have made quite a few changes since last year. There are now more pitches available and more electric hook-up points. The size of the pitches is quite generous, particularly by Spanish standards. It has clearly become very popular and is frequented by a strong Dutch contingent.

As I have previously reported, this site is an former bull and horse farm. It was associated with bullfighting as is evidenced by its own on-site training bullring. The current proprietor, Octavio, is a former toreador, now retired, we are happy to say. The bullring where Octavio trained, however, is naturally quite a curiosity,  irrespective of one’s opinion of bullfighting, and is surrounded by historic memorabilia.

After surviving the downpours of our Biblical Christmas Day – undoubtedly the worst Christmas Day I can remember – on Boxing Day it was a relief to get out without it raining and we took a wander into the village of Alcalalí to a modest supermarket attached to the local service station. One of our campsite’s neighbouring properties had avoided being inundated but did sport a modest lake/pond as a result of the 24 hours of quite heavy rain.

On our return saunter, we poked our noses over the wall of the bullring and were surprised to see a bull sitting in the middle, on a relatively dry patch, chewing the cud. The bullring hadn’t quite turned into a swimming pool. Last year we had not seen a bull in residence. This was not one of the sleek, black fighting bulls but was a much heavier-looking beast altogether. Here are a couple of pictures at different magnifications to give the idea.

This is a little gem of a campsite run by a delightful family. It rivals that of our favourite French campsite on a dairy sheep farm near Carcassonne, run by another lovely family who have become personal friends. I’ve seen reviews of Heredad de Elias Ferrer suggesting that it is “the best campsite we’ve been on”. I can believe it. As Spanish campsites continue to get rammed over winter, I can see this one becoming too popular. It would be good for the family, of course.

It’s all right, folks; in the words of the immortal genius Douglas Adams, “Don’t Panic”. I have not suddenly become religious.

For the duration of our 2025 Xmas trip we are, for better or worse, on the delightful little Alcalali campsite on the Heredad de Elias Ferrer, a former bull and horse farm now run by his son, Octavio Ferrer.

Since arriving we’ve been able to enjoy some sunny afternoons which enabled us to sit outside Frodo basking, accompanied, of course, by sipping. However …

Xmas morning dawned grey and began with intermittent light rain. Gradually at first, the light rain increased in intensity until, come lunchtime, the rain was heavy. Heavy rain continued constantly throughout the afternoon and evening.

For entertainment in such locked-in situations, we are equipped with Francine’s iPad, my laptop and Frodo’s less than user-friendly “smart” TV. We have a decent wi-fi connection but it’s naturally a Spanish wi-fi connection and, being in foreign parts, our delightful UK TV apps refuse to let us see them “natively”. You need a VPN to pretend that you are in the UK.

Sadly, Frodo’s smart TV isn’t smart enough to provide a VPN app, such as NordVPN. I do, however, have a NordVPN subscription and have it installed on my laptop so I gave that a whirl. Bingo, it worked! We managed to get iPlayer streaming to us on the laptop. The only difficulty is that the laptop volume does not wind up high enough to be heard over the deafening sound of biblical quantities of rain hammering down incessantly on Frodo’s roof. The same is true of Francine’s iPad which is, again, simply not loud enough.

Happily, we had already bought enough food for the duration. (Ya gotta check the dates on the packaging to make sure you don’t run over the “die after” date.) In between straining our ears for some entertainment, we cooked our Christmas dinner, electing to try “Secreto de Cerdo with Harissa and Cucumber and Kasha Salad” – a Belazu recipe. (I skipped the Caraway seeds – never a great fan.) The definition of Kasha seems a little lax so we used some Merchant Gourmet Ancient Grains to fill the role.

Secreto is a Spanish cut of pork from between the loin and the shoulder, apparently. It’s prized for its marbling and juicy texture. Ideally it should be from an Iberico pig, though ours was from a regular piggie. Consequently, I gave it slightly longer cooking of five minutes on each side. Though leaving it pink in the middle is suggested, I don’t think n this case that it worked as well as it might, If we can get some Iberico secreto, I may give it another go.

We did buy what we thought was an innocent jar of mixed olives and gherkins, just for a pre-prandial nibble. When we opened the jar we got a mild shock. The reality was more complex and a whole lot more suggestive. An interesting idea, Spain. Well, it brightened up an otherwise dull and dreary afternoon.

Our biblical rain continued throughout the majority of the night.

We are being most un-motorhome-like on this trip since we’ll be rooted in one place for a month. [What our late lamented American friend Keith used to refer to as being potted plants.] We must hope that relaxing doesn’t metamorphose into boring. It shouldn’t; when we had Casa Libélula we’d be here for three months. I’ve booked a rental car to give us more flexibility for a chunk of January. For now, however, we are back to using our e-bikes.

My bike has been through the wars, yet again, and was getting close to not making it on this Xmas trip. I should return to our escorted 2025 Spain trip back in September when we were staying at Baiona.

For reasons of sheer embarrassment, I failed to mention messing up my poor ol’ bike in September. As we were preparing to leave the Baiona campsite to head into Portugal, I was reversing Frodo, as instructed, into the motor vehicle service point to drain his grey water. I was leaning out of the driver’s side window watching to position our waste water outlet above the drain. What I wasn’t watching was the reversing camera. Behind Frodo or, more significantly, behind the bikes mounted on the back of Frodo, was a metal post, which I managed to reverse into with the rear wheel of my bike. Only later did I discover that the rear wheel rim was not just buckled but bent. With the bent rear wheel now jamming in the rear forks, the bike was now unusable.

Wind forward to our return home intending to get poor ol’ bike fixed. It would clearly need a new rear wheel, the bent rim being unrecoverable. My bike is an estarli e28 assembled in Berkhamsted not far from our home.

Enter e-gotcha #1. My initial thought was to just return my buggered rear wheel to the local dealer to order a replacement. Not so fast, Speedy. “Regular” bikes have quick-release levers on the hubs of both front and rear wheels. Not so e-bikes or, at least, not so those e-bikes with the motor in the rear hub. [Some are in the pedal crank.] Such e-bikes have large nuts fixing the rear hub into the rear forks. In our case, these are 17mm large nuts.

Think about the implications of this for a moment. Should you be unlucky enough to suffer a rear wheel puncture, unless you are prepared to try to fix it in-situ, getting tied up in the rear forks, rear mudguard and chain mechanisms [most unappealing], your puncture repair kit now has to include a bloody great 17mm open-ended spanner.

There’s another less than helpful wrinkle: an electric cable runs from the controller on the front of the bike, along the rear forks (attached by cable ties), through the bloody great 17mm nut and into the rear wheel hub containing the motor. Your rear wheel is effectively tethered to your bike. Your puncture repair kit now also needs to contain a knife or scissors to cut the cable ties attaching said cable to said rear forks together with, after the puncture has been repaired, new cable ties to re-attach said cable to said rear forks.

What a palaver. Pray that you do not suffer a rear wheel puncture or, indeed, drive into another post.

Chickening out of jumping through these hoops to remove the rear wheel, I took the entire bike back to the dealer. More accurately, the dealer very helpfully collected it, since I couldn’t even wheel it with the bent rear wheel.

Enter e-gotcha #2. Though my bike is less than two years old, estarli have seen fit to begin using an updated rear hub. Their latest hub has integral gears rather than my trusty and more conventional derailleur arrangement. Wait for it: The latest hub is not compatible with the original controller so, without changing a whole lot more, the latest wheels would be no good to me. [SIGH. Built-in obsolescence, or what?]

However, my e-bike dealer said that estarli had some reconditioned old wheels with my kind of hub. They’d be cheaper, anyway. OK, sounds good – go for it. A replacement wheel was duly ordered and, after a week or so, fitted. [The gear block had to be moved over to the replacement wheel.]

After all that was done, I picked my bike up with some relief and began cycling back home. My relief did not last very long. I got half way home when all power disappeared and the replacement hub began making distressing graunching noises. I returned to my dealer on manual power, which felt a whole lot more strenuous, I have to say.

This time the whole bike was returned to estarli. After a week or so of hearing nothing, except that they hadn’t looked at it yet, I was getting nervous that it would not be back in time for this trip.

A contact of Francine’s, hearing my tale of woe, very kindly loaned me a quite similar older e-bike of his as a back up. How gracious is that?

Just over a week before this trip, I learned that estarli would be looking at my stricken bike. This they did and it was eventually back at my dealer in our home town. Once again I collected it. This time, I made it all the way home. I rode it a couple of times and it behaved itself. I can’t say my confidence was high but I finally decided to bring my bike to Spain rather than the loaner.

After that lengthy historical aside, back to the present.

Today we boarded our bikes to ride into Jalón. It’s Saturday so the accursed rastro [a flea market] would be in full swing and the town and bars would be heaving. We wanted some shopping (read beer and wine), though, and would brave the nonsense to get to a supermarket.

That was after we had managed to take a completely wrong turn in the maze of tracks winding their way through the vineyards and orange groves lying between Alcalalí and Jalón. How silly did we feel, living here for years and now going the wrong way? How the memory plays tricks on one. We unwound our mistake to eventually find the correct route, which landed us slap bang in the middle of the rastro before we could actually get to a supermarket.

At least I got my beer.

We’ve driven past Zaragoza many times as we made our way to and from Casa Libélula. This is the first time we have actually stayed there. We were very favourably impressed with the municipal campsite at Zaragoza; it was spacious, especially for a Spanish campsite, well signed and easily accessible. The shower block was very warm, though the water tended to slow down when turned around to hot enough. Nonetheless, it worked well.

I made an interesting beer discovery. The local brew – local to Zaragoza, that is – is Ambar, and very good it was, too. Their regular lager was tasty enough but they also brew an “export” at 7% ABV which is well worth drinking.

In the morning we awoke to the sound of some Christmas carols coming, we think, from a local school. Very festive and not too disturbing. We prepared ourselves in a leisurely fashion and hit the road at about 09:30 for the second stage of our journey down to Alcalalí, a journey of almost 450kms which would take us about five hours.

Once you get on the motorway leaving Zaragoza, it’s a straight shot to the autopista de Mediterraneo on the coast, then down to Valencia. Driving in Spain on the motorways is a dream, traffic is light and the surfaces are generally good; you basically set the cruise control and keep going. It used to be necessary to slow down for toll booths but now the motorways south of Zaragoza are all free there’s no need for that anymore on this stretch. Much of the traffic is trucks, though, so you do have to watch the rear view mirror to pull out and pass those.

We broke our journey for lunch at Barracas, where there is an intriguingly named “Lady Bar” beside the café/restaurant. [Best not to dwell on that.] Barracas is a popular stop with the truck drivers; maybe even more popular at night given that Lady Bar. The coffee and tapas are good for lunch, though.

The journey had been plain sailing with little traffic until we approached Valencia, where the traffic increased noticeably. It was still plain sailing, just quite a bit busier. The traffic thinned out again south of Valencia for our final hour’s driving to Alcalalí..

To us, this stretch of motorway feels like coming home, as familiar with it as we are. Arriving at Alcalalí, we were welcomed by Susana, Octavio Ferrer’s delightful wife, Octavio being the proprietor and retired toreador. Frodo found himself a delightful pitch looking up at the Col de Rates and got settled. If we get any afternoon sun, Frodo’s lounge will benefit from it.

As we relaxed outside Frodo in today’s afternoon sun, we were surprised to hear and see House Martins feeding overhead. House Martins in Spain in the middle of December? Shouldn’t they be back in Africa, now? Resorting to good ol’ Google, it seems that there are House Martins that do not cross back into Africa but choose to overwinter in the more southerly parts of the Iberian peninsular and Mediterranean basin.

Live and learn.

This trip is a bit of a reprise. In the halcyon days of owning Casa Libélula, we were used to spending Christmas, along with much of our winter, in Jalón, Spain. However, since trading in Casa for a motorhome we haven’t tried it. We are now correcting that oversight and are heading back to Heredad de Elias Ferrer, complete with its fascinating training bullring, in Alacalalí for Christmas 2025. Apart from the weather, which frankly can go either way, the appeal of Spain at this time of year is that they tend to downplay Christmas. Or, at least, they did. We intend to see how it is now.

This was a slightly late decision on our part. We managed to book a Portsmouth-Bilbao crossing on 16th December; a late evening departure at 22:45. Sadly the club-class lounge was full so we have to mix it with the hoi polloi. Our return trip on 31st January from Santander [note to self: for pity’s sake remember that you have booked an asymmetric journey, this time] does come with the club class lounge.

We left our usual safety buffer and set off for Portsmouth at 15:30 on 16th, a Tuesday. We’d be running into rush hour on the jaM25, so a buffer would be necessary. Other than slowly through the usual bottlenecks of the jaM25 (the M40 and the M3 junctions), our journey went smoothly. We checked into an already busy Portsmouth ferry port at about 19:00. Most folks were there early, perhaps to avoid darkness.

Our ferry was delayed by 30 minutes but we finally loaded and departed at roughly 23:10. We’d really lucked out; we were loaded on deck 3 and were in pole position, literally jammed up against the disembarkation ramp. We weren’t sure if immigration into Spain would be slowed by new biometric checks, so being up front in the queue could prove to be a distinct advantage.

Our crossing was one with two nights and a whole day spent on board. We’d also lucked out with a window of fair weather so the potentially scary Bay of Biscay wasn’t; in fact as we’ve noted in the past, the Channel can be a little rougher. As well as missing out on the club class lounge, we had to make do with an inside cabin but, to be honest, the fake illuminated sunny view is actually much better than a genuine porthole.

We actually docked in Bilbao in the middle of the night, at something like 02:00 – 03:00 on 18th December. Disembarkation however, was still held until 08:00 – the Spanish immigration authorities must be given time to wake up.

Sitting in port for the early hours suited us. Thanks to our BBBs [Braindead Bastard Brexiteers], we can no longer bring food into the EU. This means that we need to arrive when it is possible to go shopping and find a suitable place to do so. we were intending to stop at Leclerc in Miranda de Ebro and that wouldn’t open until 09:00. Leclerc was about an hour’s drive away. Our extremely fortuitous pole position had us disembarking as the third vehicle off the ferry. We were at the immigration booths slightly before they were ready.

There didn’t seem to be any additional delays occasioned by any new biometric checks. We were soon on the nightmarish roads of Bilbao attempting to leave it without taking any wrong turns. I hate the roads of Bilbao. After an hour we arrived at Miranda de Ebro to fill our fridge.

Now, this Leclerc supermarket is a joy to behold in more ways than one. Not only is it an excellent French-chain supermarket but it has a free overnight parking area for motorhomes complete with a motor vehicle service point. How stunningly practical and helpful is that? You’d never get anything this motorhome-friendly in the UK. It’s utterly brilliant; everything you need on your doorstep including a wonderful supermarket.

Next stop: Zaragoza. Zaragoza is about half way from Bilbao to Alacalalí and this is where we planned to stop overnight. Francine had booked the campsite. After a brief lunch break on the outskirts of the city, we arrived at about 15:00. Check-in was easy (other than squeezing delicately past an inconsiderately parked caravan, it’s rear corner left sticking out in the road. For Spanish sites (this is a municipal), our pitch was quite generous. Frodo got settled and we repaired to the onsite bar and restaurant for some well-deserved refreshment.

And relax! The beer, incidentally, was new to me. It’s Ambar, local to Zaragoza, and very good it was, too.