27 October 2022 - Alcoutim then back into Spain

Miles driven today = 43

Total Miles to date = 2,715

We were rather torn to be leaving Shamwari this morning.  There were only 3 vans there last night and we were the last to leave so it was just incredibly quiet and peaceful and we took a moment to absorb the scenery one more time before we fired up the engine.

Our first leg today was just a few kilometres to the village of Alcoutim.  One of the ex-pats who we were chatting with last night lives there and told us how much she loves the place and we could see why.  Funnily enough she was the first person we bumped into after parking up at the new aire.

It's a fairly laid back, low key type of place, which, as always, boasts the remains of a hilltop castle.  

It's probably full of tourists in peak season, as there is a hotel just outside of the village, but it's relatively quiet at this time of year.

There is a passenger ferry to the Spanish village of Sanlucar de Guadiana on the other side of the river.  I have to say that in a game of castle top trumps theirs would win hands down.

They also have a couple of hilltop windmills over there.

But Alcoutim does have a 3 metre tall recycled plastic cat!  I'd love to be able to tell you more about this but the info board next to it had bleached out to the point of being utterly illegible.  I'm guessing it was made from scrap salvaged from the river.  The paw pads are old building site safety helmets.  (edit: my good friend Paul has pointed out it's actually an otter.  My bad!)

Under way again and it was time to break for the border.  We glided down the IC27 and across the bridge over the Guadiana, which connects Portugal with Spain.  Shortly afterwards we took a right turn to Isla Christina and stocked up at Lidl before moving just a few kilometres further down the road to Camping Playa Taray, shortly before the resorts of Urbasur and Islantilla.

The campsite is on flat rough ground but the facilities are clean and newish and it's only €14 a night including EHU with our ACSI card.  Our only reason for coming here is that we fancied a bit of sand between our toes before heading on to the bright lights of Seville.  Given the fact our clocks went forward an hour at the border it was getting on for 2:30 by the time we were set up and had lunch, so we just went for a wander up the huge and almost deserted beach.  

Lisa indulged in her favourite passtime of collecting shells.  We walked for about 45 minutes and then sat in the dunes for a while before meandering back again.

We have to cross a road and walk through a small band of pine trees to get to the beach but there is nothing else here really of note other than a seemingly rather ambiguous chapel among the trees.  Apparently it's a hermitage where they have a celebration of "Our Lady of Hope" every June.  It's probably been there in one form or another since long before the pines were planted or any of the resorts along this spit of sand were ever conceived.

28 October 2022 - Down by the riverside