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J&P MoHo Adventures

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J&P MoHo Adventures

We are a retired couple living in Spain and adventuring in our motor home to visit the wonderful countries around us.

26/03/2024

Last night it rained and it rained and it rained some more! Unfortunately, it didn’t lull me off to sleep! I lay their trying but failing to sleep with all sorts of rubbish going through my mind. Meanwhile, Pauline laid peacefully breathing rhythmically beside me, until five in the morning when she too was awoken. After about ½ an hour of chat we resumed our attempt at sleeping, with partial success.
We moved on from the Avignon site this morning, having done the camp chores. Emptied the grey & black water and topped up the fresh water. Oh and cleaned the van of the debris the rain had washed out of the overhead trees. By the time we had done that and stopped at Carrefour for a food top up it was well gone midday when we got on the road.
Given our previous toll charge shock we decided to avoid them. The downside is that a toll journey that would take approx. 2-1/2 to 3 hours is extended to over 4 off the tolls. Never the less we were determined to avoid being ripped off again. Besides, you get to see more of the French countryside and the small towns along the way.
Much of the route was on the long straight roads lined with Plane trees, a legacy of Napoleonic times, so typical of France. We crossed many rivers and enjoyed some lovely scenery despite the fact that it rained for much of the day. We stopped for lunch in a church carpark at a road island in a village called Lamotte-du-Rhone. While stopped we decided to revise our intended destination removing a 100k and 1-1/4hr of driving from our To Do list. This also changed the route so our afternoon drive took us up the N7 running along the banks of the mighty Rhone river.
We finally arrived at our nights stop about 18:45. The arrival was not without incident as yours truly over shot the turn and decided to take the van down an unsuitable track thinking I would be able to turn round and come out again. But, well, oops, couldn’t do that. Not enough room. I had to reverse out, partially onto the busy main road, with Pauline guiding me and getting quite wet in the process. She was NOT impressed!
The forecast for tonight is for rain, rain and more rain. Let’s hope we can sleep!!

25/03/2024

This morning following a breakfast of coffee and croissants (what else on our first morning in France) we were given a free lift, by our site host, into the historic centre of Avignon. Having been dropped of just inside the walled city we made our way to the Place de Palais where the Palais de Papes (Palace of Popes) is located. We decided to have a coffee first, and wished we hadn’t. €11 for two coffees!!!!! Oh, but we did get a small glass of water with it and the smallest Magdalena I’ve ever seen.
We staggered away from that mugging and headed into the Palais where we purchased 2 joint tickets for the Palais de Papes and the Pont d’Avignon including a visual “Histopad” guide. We both qualified for the senior citizen discount so paid €23.
The “Histopad” turned out to be a rather cumbersome tablet device that could track your location and invited you to scan a pictogram that then brought up text details of the particular room and created a 360’ image of what it would have looked like in its heyday.
The Palace is a conglomeration of several building built during the 14th century and was the residence of 6 Popes from 1334 to 1394. There were several Papal State rooms and the Treasury accounting office where they tallied up all the taxes and tributes received from the Holy Roman Empire around the world. Underneath the Treasury office was the vault where they stored the heavy iron reinforced wooden chests containing the wealth. Further items of the highest value and religious reliquaries were hidden away in niches below the floor.
After the Palace we had lunch which was nice enough but pricy compared with what we’re used to at home.
We then headed of towards the Pont Saint-Benezet, better known to the world as the Pont d’Avignon. This came with an audio guide contained in a more manageable phone size device. The bridge was built between 1177 & 1185 originally consisting of 22 arches and spanned the width of the Rhone. At that time before the build-up of silt had created the island of Ile de la Barthelasse (on which we are parked) the river would have been much wider, maybe 1000m, so it was quite a feat of engineering. Unfortunately due to subsequent flooding and wars between the France and Rome there are only 4 arches remaining.
We ended our first tourist day with another coffee, at a much more reasonable €4.60, and took a taxi back to the site just as the rain was starting to fall.

25/03/2024

Sur La pont d’Avignon.

25/03/2024

We left our park-up just before 11 this morning. We had intended to pop into the nearest Mercadona before leaving Spain. However when I looked for the location, Google said it was closed. At that point I remembered that today is Sunday. 🤦‍♂️!
Oh well, never mind, at least we could get on our way. We had almost 350km to get to our next destination. As I posted earlier, this was going to take us over the border into France. It occurred to us as we approached that this would be the first holiday we have taken in a country other than Spain for the past 20 years! We passed the 17th century Forte de Bellegarde which dominates the lower hilltops of the border and snow-capped mountains.
We stopped for a quick coffee and found that French motorway coffee is just as bad as any other motorway coffee! Continued on up the A9 and stopped (at random) for lunch of bread and cheese at Aire de Loupian - George Brassens. This had several pieces of sculpture the main one being a large bronze of a man holding a guitar. Apparently Monsieur Brassens was a prolific singer songwriter and poet and is quite an iconic figure in France (according to Wikipedia)
Last night, having checked out route options for Toll and Non-toll I had found that the toll route was 40km shorter than the non-toll. I looked on the ViaMichelin website for the toll cost, it said €26. I thought that wasn’t a bad bargain. Unfortunately, I now think that was for an ordinary car. We were a bit shocked when we exited and found that our MoHo had clocked up €44.50!!!!! 😡😡! Won’t be doing that again!
Oh well, never mind, at least we got to our chosen Camp site in good time and got settled. Tomorrow we’ll go and see some sites in Avignon

24/03/2024

First proper camp site in Avignon. Parked up, leci on sat facing the rapidly setting sun with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate.

24/03/2024

This morning we crossed the border into France.
Now parked up in an Aire having bread and cheese for lunch with a cup of tea. About 100km to our overnight stop so for the first time on this trip we are on schedule.

23/03/2024

We continued on our route this morning with a target destination of Girona, a distance of just over 400km. We had decided to stop for lunch at the town of Torredembara, roughly half way. This decision was based on our remembrance of a previously enjoyed meal in a particular restaurant on the way back from Barcelona. Unfortunately our memory of the town did not bear much similarity to the location in which we found ourselves. As for the restaurant? We soon realised that we had absolutely no idea where it was let alone what it was called! Missed out on a few of the Ps there and ended up with the P #*s Poor!!! Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. We needed to eat! The alternative we ended up with was a strange combination of Chinese and Spanish. I started with a prawn noodle stir fry and Pauline went for mini spring rolls. They looked better than they were! Mine was OK, Pauline’s turned out to be all roll and no spring (vegetables)! Her second course was just as bad while my sepia a la plancha was good. We discussed Pauline’s meal with the establishment; they accepted our part payment offer.
The service was also slow so we didn’t get moving again until about four thirty to travel the remaining 175km. Never mind though, we got to the paid Area we’d selected and had selected and had a hot chicken roll for supper.

22/03/2024

Today was our scheduled departure day. We have been thinking about and planning this first long haul trip for some months and we really went into preparation overdrive on returning from the UK in January. See my earlier post for some details. Somehow though, despite the best laid plans, we came close to not actually getting away today. There just always appears to be so many more last minute tasks to do than we had planned for. The task that really delayed our departure was forgetting to turn on the fridge first thing this morning. It should have been done at 8am but instead I went in the shower and didn’t remember until 9am! So having got everything else ready by about 1 o’clock we decided that the fridge & freezer were not yet cold enough. Unperturbed we decided to get some lunch in The Square and give it another check later. Even had we left earlier, we reasoned that we’d need to stop for lunch, so nothing lost really. We returned home an hour later to find that the test pot of water had started to freeze over so ready to go. It still took another hour before we got on the motorway, having dropped off a house plant with a friend for safe keeping.
We had decided on an overnight stopping area around Castellón de la Plana. The late start however meant that we were unable to get quite that far so while taking a quick comfort stop at the services we picked out the free “Area”, pronounced “ArAYa”, in the town of “la Vall d’Uixó”. That looks like a very Catalan name and I really don’t how to pronounce it! We arrived just as dusk turned to night. Needing to stretch my legs after 4 hours driving, I took a quick walk around. We are in the company of several other motorhomes from across Europe. I saw several German and Dutch registrations. There was also a UK plated van but no sign of the occupants.
Bread & Omelette and a cup of Tea for supper, followed by planning the next leg of our journey, then writing this drivel. I am glad of bringing the Laptop along to work on though; it’s much easier than on the mobile!

20/03/2024

We have been furiously busying ourselves since returning from the UK to get everything prepared for our first long haul trip.
This has involved me in a fair amount of DIY work on the MoHo and a lot of route and overnight planning, mostly done by Pauline.

The MoHo now has an Android double DIN head unit, basically a smart device, in place of the standard radio. This has GPS & WiFi capability and loaded with various Apps for navigation, music/radio, Googling, WhatsApp etc. It also has RevCam and DashCam. To keep us connected while on the road we've also added a router with SIM card to the van. Thanks to Richard for helping to set these up.

We have also converted the habitation gas to refillable LPG, thanks go to Martin for help on that task.
I moved the bike rack support arms around so that they mount better and made up a new Electric Hook-Up cable real. We have invested in some external windscreen covers to deal with the cooler nights as we travel North.

The engine has been remapped, not DIY obviously! Finally, we had the local Fiat heavy garage give it a pre-trip check over. All OK there. They also got it weighed for us which came in at a reassuringly low 2940kg. That was with a fair amount of kit on-board!

Preparations all done we're now onto the final packing and will on our way soon. We will keep you all posted!

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Over The Border Line

This morning we crossed the border into France. Now parked up in an Aire having bread and cheese for lunch with a cup of tea. About 100km to our overnight stop so for the first time on this trip we are on schedule.

Today was our scheduled departure day. We have been thinking about and planning this first long haul trip for some months and we really went into preparation overdrive on returning from the UK in January. See my earlier post for some details. Somehow though, despite the best laid plans, we came close to not actually getting away today. There just always appears to be so many more last minute tasks to do than we had planned for. The task that really delayed our departure was forgetting to turn on the fridge first thing this morning. It should have been done at 8am but instead I went in the shower and didn’t remember until 9am! So having got everything else ready by about 1 o’clock we decided that the fridge & freezer were not yet cold enough. Unperturbed we decided to get some lunch in The Square and give it another check later. Even had we left earlier, we reasoned that we’d need to stop for lunch, so nothing lost really. We returned home an hour later to find that the test pot of water had started to freeze over so ready to go. It still took another hour before we got on the motorway, having dropped off a house plant with a friend for safe keeping. We had decided on an overnight stopping area around Castellón de la Plana. The late start however meant that we were unable to get quite that far so while taking a quick comfort stop at the services we picked out the free “Area”, pronounced “ArAYa”, in the town of “la Vall d’Uixó”. That looks like a very Catalan name and I really don’t how to pronounce it! We arrived just as dusk turned to night. Needing to stretch my legs after 4 hours driving, I took a quick walk around. We are in the company of several other motorhomes from across Europe. I saw several German and Dutch registrations. There was also a UK plated van but no sign of the occupants. Bread & Omelette and a cup of Tea for supper, followed by planning the next leg of our journey, then writing this drivel. I am glad of bringing the