El Rocío

We weren’t meant to be in El Rocío until tomorrow night, but it’s been one of those days! 

We left the overnight car park in Sevilla bright and early this morning, and 30 minutes later we were in a Carrefour hypermarket where we could actually park the van outside. It was huge – probably larger than the Calais one we’ve been to before – and we managed to get most of what we wanted. Ninety minutes later we were loading it up in the van. 

Our plan was to stay on an aire outside Sevilla tonight, and then tomorrow visit Italica, a Roman archaeological site in Santiponce, before moving on to El Rocío. I’d found two free aires on the interweb, so if the first was no good then we had a Plan B. We bashed the co-ordinates into the satnav and off we went. 

The first aire was behind a petrol station and wasn’t at all nice – very bumpy and not very well maintained (if at all). It didn’t feel very safe either, as there were some dodgy looking characters hanging around, so we decided to go for Plan B (though with did take the opportunity to empty our waste). 

The second aire didn’t exist. The co-ordinates were for another petrol station but there was no signage for motorhomes, and again the area didn’t feel very safe anyway. Time for Plan C – wild camping in Santiponce! 

The drive up to Santiponce took about 20 minutes, and we found a good spot to park for the night. It was late afternoon by this time, so we thought we’d do a recce for tomorrow morning. According to their website the site, museum and tourist information were all supposed to be open, but none was, so we were now concerned that it would all be closed tomorrow, what with it being Semana Santa and all. 

We had a conflab on the way back to the van and thought sod it, let’s just move on to El Rocío, which is exactly what we did – Plan D! That’s the beauty of travelling like we are, we have so much flexibility. 

El Rocío is inside a national park, so we’ve had to book into a site costing €17 a night, but it’s so good that we’ve decided to stay here tomorrow night as well, and drive over to Portugal on Monday. 

No photos today. 

Mike

4 thoughts on “El Rocío”

  1. Love reading about your adventures. Glad you’re not like the dickhead in Sainsbury’s who parked sideways over 4 bays on a Saturday. Keep up the posts, it’s great to hear how it’s going

    PS Black Stone Cherry were on live and acoustic on Vintage Music channel last night

    • Hi Stu, lovely to hear from you!

      Glad you’re enjoying the blog, it’s great to hear when people are actually reading it! I have to confess that we sometimes park sideways on in the supermarket, though the car park is normally pretty empty, so we’re not depriving anyone.

      Always good to hear that BSC are getting coverage – Vintage Music channel eh? They’ve only been going 10 or 11 years!

      Hope you enjoyed your time in Berlin.

      Cheers

      Mike

  2. Have been eagerly reading all your blogs (sometimes a few days at a time) and the photos are amazing – so clear. I haven’t posted any comments recently but just wanted to let you know that both Dave and I are reading them. It must be fantastic to be somewhere where the Easter eggs haven’t been on sale since February!!

    • Mike’s chief photographer so I can’t take the credit. We’re still enjoying our travels. We’ve been to so many places that we would never have seen during a two week holiday. Now in Portugal and looking forward to what it has to offer. XX

Comments are closed.