From the monastery overnight stop we headed back towards the coast and south to the delta plain of the River Ebro, a vast flat area and one of the largest wetland areas in the western Mediterranean. We commented in jest that this was probably the rice bowl of Spain and Spain’s equivalent of the Mekong Delta, only to read later that in fact one of the main crops is indeed rice. At this time of year most of the fields are bare of any crops but many tractors, looking like toys against the scale of the landscape, were ploughing the fields ready for spring. Our chosen spot for the night was a small motorhome area with limited facilities next to a restaurant and right opposite the beach at Riumar. Our fellow campers again were all German or Dutch and the site had a ‘beach bum’ feel to it with chickens scratching around so we felt right at home!
There were attractive boardwalk walks along the large sandy beach and we also cycled to the mouth of the River Ebro via wetlands with flamingos and bird hides for watching other bird species. The delta plain has increased hugely in size over the years as soil has been washed down river and villages that were once on the coast are now about 10km inland.
The landscape we’ve seen so far has a very muted colour palette with the ochre earth, olive trees and the pale pink blossom of almond trees. Already everywhere looks dried out and most river beds we drive over are dried out. We’ve been impressed by the quality of the roads we’ve used, traffic free, often scenic and toll free even on the short stretches of motorways we’ve used. The landscape we’ve seen to date along the roads south has been industrial rather than scenic with fairly utilitarian architecture.
From Riumar we wended our way further south of Barcelona along the coast, keeping to the coast road where possible to look at some of the seaside towns along the way to our intended destination. We passed via Vinaros, Benicarlo and Peñiscola, obviously all very popular seaside resorts and whilst we passed some nice areas on the outskirts of each town for coffee stops, they were all quite built up and hemmed in.
It’s also interesting for us to compare the campsites in Spain with those we’ve frequented in France. We’ve passed a number of sites here that, at a first glance, look like a motorhome storage parking site but are in fact campsites with motorhomes lined up cheek by jowl. They obviously just like to cram them in here! So we were pleased to find when we arrived at our destination of Ribamar that the site was more akin to one we might see in the UK. This was the only site we had booked in advance to use as a base for a couple of days. Although we now have 4×4 capability we hadn’t expected to be using it much but it certainly came in useful to negotiate the 2 km unmade road to access the campsite.
More on our exploring from the campsite to follow….
PS. Apologies for the numerous photos featuring the van. As you can imagine we’re still getting over it being a novelty to us. There will be fewer in the future!