Well another week and we will be back in the UK, we had over a month in Markadia Portugal but the fishing was very patchy compared to how it has fished in the past, with my best days catch only 13 carp, compared to the 20 or even 30 plus we normally catch... The Barragem is very high at the moment with a good 15ft more depth, and the water was cold making the carp not feed as much, I suppose I caught over 70 in the 34 days we were there, but there was a PB for Marksdia with a carp of ten pounds, the first double I have ever had out, the normal weight is between a pound and a half up to 7 lbs...

So we left Markadia and made our way up to Villa Nova D Serveira in the north of Portugal to see Chris and his mum, they took us out for a nice trip along the Spanish coast as the Spanish border is the river Minho and Spain is only at the other side of the river, we had some Tapas at bar and a few drinks, and it was a lovely day out, we will all being well see them again next year,,,

So we are sat in Hornfluer North France and will stay here on the local Aire as there are all the facility's including free electricity, there is also free wifi but I can't figure out how to get on line as the registering process is in French, I have tried a couple of times but have given up!..

So we sail back from Zeebruge to Hull on the 20th of March, it will make a change to have to drive the 20 minutes back home instead of the 10 hour slog battling the M25 and Dartford crossing..

A few pisc's

Hi.

Well we have been away for a few weeks now starting mid December 2014, we had a good sail over Dover Calais a very smooth crossing just missing the big winds forecast for the following day...

Then a leisurely drive down to Bill and Bonny's place in Confluence France where we stayed a few days before traveling down in convoy to Bonterra Park http://bonterrapark.com/en Benicassim where we are at the moment, we will be here until the end of January where we will travel down to our old stamping ground of Markadia Portugal http://youtu.be/BgmjwTrjQz0 where will stay fishing until the first week in March 2015...

So for Bonterra Park a change for us actually going on a camp site other than Markadia, it is  well set out and all the facilities apart from black water dump are actually on your pitch which makes it easy.. There is wifi at 18 Euros a month with a decent signal allowing us to stream full movies on U Tube, and we can still get some English stations on the satellite on the van, which also keeps us in the loop as far as news and the weather at home is concerned.. Have rang Norman a couple of times to see what is happening and if he has been fishing which is more than I have as there is only the Med Sea to fish in, which is not for me..

The weather since we arrived in Spain has been glorious and Sandra and I have started getting a tan, it has been in the low 20's most of the days with wall to wall sunshine, except today Monday 19th Jan where it has clouded over and is raining a bit, the weather forecast says it will be back to wall to wall sunshine again come this Thursday..

We have had a few trips out, on the scooter and Bill hired a car for a week and took us out in that... In Benacasim this week it is their festival with all sorts of stuff going on including fire bulls where they tie fireworks to the bulls horns, I will be giving that a miss!.. We went to a park in Orraposa? or some spelling like that, where there were loads of big carp swimming about, and to the castle where El Cid with Charlton Heston was filmed, where he was charging down the beach dead tied to his horse..

taken quite a few photos when I can figure out how to load them on the computer from our new camera, when I do I will post some..

ray.

Hi.

I can't believe it was July the last time I put anything down on the blog, and it is now nearly the end of September, time is flying by. So I will have to do a potted version to get it all up to date.

During  July we decided keeping the new scooter inside the back garage was a pain as everything had to come out before we could get the scooter out and the reverse when it went back, so we bit the bullet and went to a CAR.IT in Rome to have one fitted, expensive but it is a great bit of kit and I can take the scooter off the back or put it back on in a couple of minutes, now we use the scooter a lot more.
Went to some great Sostas to stay all of then free some very basic and one even had free electricity water and waste dump, and it was conveniently placed at the side of a winery where the sold cut price wine in their shop outlet.

On the 21st of July we went to pick Annie up from the Leonardo Di Vinnci Airport she was going to stay with us for a week. Our first stop was in Rome at Camping Village Roma, a great big sprawling site but very near the centre of Rome, Sandra and Annie had a couple of days visiting the sites in Rome, I stayed behind to look after the dog as it would not have been fair shutting her up in the van in all that heat.
We all then went to a free Sosta at a great beach location further down the coast where Annie could indulge in some serious sunbathing on the beach, from there we went to the Sosta next to the Winery as it was not far from the airport as Annie had to fly back to the UK on Sunday, she seemed reluctant to go, I wonder why.

We moved about Italy until we got to Pisa to see the leaning tower, which was OK, did the photos then back on the scooter to the van which we had to park well out of town as everything was chock a block/
Sandra said we will have to find a supermarket to stock up , so I found a Conad supermarket not too far away, we arrived and parked up on the edge of the car park, until Sandra said "go over there there is a place you cam park", I set of through the cars when BANG! I hit a sign which had been hit by someone else and turned the wrong way round so it was edge on to my vision, it broke the windscreen.

So we spent the next 20 day or so hanging around Milan so we could get the windscreen replace by Car Glass. We spent most of the time on a car park in a great place up in the mountains called Foppolo, it is really a Ski Resort but is so nice for walking it is open to tourists all the year.

1st of Aug we could finally go back into Milan to get the new windscreen fitted, we stayed in their car park at the back of the factory as they wanted us there first thing to fit the glass. During the night we were treated to the most spectacular thunderstorm I have ever seen, we put out the awning to keep out of the rain and watched the lightening till the early hours, it was no point trying to sleep with all the banging and crashing.

We could finally move on out of Italy now the screen was fixed so we made our way over the border into South of France, it was on an Aire here that someone tried to break in the van and screw drivered the locks, luckily they didn't get in, what a downer, we have travelled through some of the poorest countries in Europe without any sign of trouble, get to super rich South of France we find a scroat!.

So we moved on again into Spain to a resort we have been to a couple of times diving  called L Estartit, we stayed on the same campsite we stayed on before, to say it was in the middle of the Spanish holiday season we were surprised we got on. While we were there there was another thunder storm, the rain was torrential and the camp site had a river running through it, folk were coming back wet through and some even were paddling their way back to their caravans and stuff..After 4 days we moved again this time to a place we know very well and feels like home. Mequinenza.

So that brings us up to date, we are still camped out at the side of the river Ebro like we have done so many times before over the years, this time though there is a free wifi signal coming from the museum at the far end of the river maybe 2 kilometres away.
We have caught many fish since we have been here including a record for Sandra a 55lb Carp.

And there's more.

A bit of video from Pompei.

Hi.

A few more pics from up and down Italy, and a some from Pompei which we visited a couple of weeks back.