Stats Update 29th January 2015

Thursday 29th January 2015

The ‘static’ pages have been updated for:

1. Sites

This page records the campsites/aires/stopovers that we’ve stayed at since buying Twernt.

The ‘ratings’ that we’ve applied are obviously subjective and reflect our view of ‘perfection’ – analogously (for those familiar with Cornwall!), we are more ‘Praa Sands’ (pronounced ‘Pray’) folk than we are ‘Newquay’ folk – it’s probably an ‘age thing’! – we prefer peaceful stopovers in areas of natural beauty – plus clinical cleanliness in all aspects of a stopover site (to satisfy my OCD tendencies!).

Our favourite stopovers to date?

Broadway – Durdle Door – Biarritz – Portimao – Cabanas – Finca de la Piedra/Coin – Vera and Platja D’Almenara (a car park!) are our favourites to date.

All chosen based on location.

We would happily spend the winter at Platja D’Almenara – and that is a complete turn-around from the attitude that we had to ‘wilding’ when we first set-out as newbies last September!

Once back in the UK, we will be addressing the ‘fail’ issues that have prevented us from being able to ‘wild’ full-time (unless, of course, we decide to dump the MoHo route to wintering in favour of another solution!).

This will involve buying a generator to power the desktop PC and we also need to find an acceptable 24/7 WiFi solution.

The Platja Almenara car park is by the beach/promenade and ‘fronts’ a newly built urbanisation (that is maybe 5% occupied).

For ‘services’ – we ‘cycled-in’ water from a local children’s play area about 1km south of our parking.

A small but well-stocked supermarket is about the same distance away in the opposite direction.

Sewerage drains are in the centre of the new and largely unused road leading into the parking area. One of our fellow ‘residents’ (who is long-terming here) led a procession of be-gloved, peg-nosed, Thetford-carrying MoHo owners at 7:00pm each night for a ‘group-cleansing-session’ to banish ‘Arthur Bliss’ and ‘Brad Pitt’ – must get a drain puller (a 1 metre steel rod with a hook for the drain and a looped handle to ‘tug’ on).

The local police drove-by 2 or 3 times a day but they never stopped – nor had they in the last month or three according to our ‘in-residence’ German friend – he told us that they were too preoccupied dealing with terrorism in Madrid! How does that work between their drive-bys when Madrid is more than 200 miles away?

Of other stopover sites?

We grew to love the Spanish-ness of the Motril, El Varadero, Playa Granada and Salobrena areas. We are not impressed with the largest of the two campsites – Camping Playa de la Poniente – and although we enjoyed our 22 nights at Camping Playa Granada (34 nights in total but we spent 12 of those nights in a villa), the on-site trees can be ‘challenging’ and it’s only really suitable for MoHo’s that are shorter than Twernt.

Those trees are enough to put us off of re-visiting Camping Playa Granada.

There is a large ‘tolerated parking’ area at Salobrena, it’s a busy site; we preferred the less well known ‘Gratuito Parking’ area at Playa Granada (‘on’ the beach – unlike the Salobrena ‘aire’).

Using this as an overnight-park-up whilst day-parking at the large promenade car park (opposite the ‘official’ camping sites) is a good choice – water is available on the promenade.

All stopovers that we’ve stayed on will be re-visited and a new blog format will contain more details about each stopover.

2. Running Costs

We have spent a total of £4510.20 living full-time in Twernt from 16th May 2014 to 31st January 2015. That’s £17.35 per day or £121.45 per week or, extrapolating this history to a full year, £527.64 per month – £6331.63 per annum.

These are our ‘baseline’ living costs and do not include food/meals out/clothing and any other personal expenditure. You can see what has been included by clicking on ‘RUNNING £’s’ on the blog page.

3. MPG Analysis

Now that the diesel filter housing has been replaced the MPG is back on track at around 22mpg.

The fuel ‘cost-per-mile’ is reducing and each gallon is now costing us 57% of the price per gallon that we paid in May 2014.

4. Live Map

The Live Map shows our current location near Peniscola in the Valencia region.

If everything ‘pans out’ here then we’ll probably stay here until it’s warm enough to mosey on up into France.