Europe Trip Day 5 and 6. -

As I come to write this tonight my brain becomes a little fuzzy and forgetful, I’m sure that comes with age. Still at least I have one thing to help me and that’s Captains Log, well that’s what we call it. Elaine keeps a daily log in our motorhome book of everything we need to know which helps me write this and if we didn’t, well I’d just forget. Do you keep a book in your motorhome?

So far on this trip we have not spent a penny on parking at all, overnight so far has been free and that’s what we love about traveling around Europe, imagine trying to do this in the UK as easily.

If you’re following so far, day four was spent in a village called Lembras and after our morning coffee and grabbing some bread we headed off back on the road, after all we are trying to chase the sunshine south. We need to put a few miles in and plan to stay in the French side of the boarder for night 5. In tradition like we do we drive in the direction we want to head and at our lunch time stop over Elaine will start to look for a site for the evening.

There is something about not knowing where we may end up for the night, what village, town or city, we find this all part of the adventure and fun. We normally agree on one on which we prefer, however I generally say to Elaine “find a back up”. That way if there is no spaces left or we just don’t like it for another reason then we can move straight onto the next place.

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As its a big mile day its mainly motorways for 80% of the drive because of course it’s more direct and faster and I find it more of a pleasure driving on these motorways than I do back home in the UK, so I asked Eliane to find out why and the answer I was given makes sense.

My interesting fact I learnt was; France is 2.3 times bigger than the UK, yet only has 2.1 million more people than the UK. So the French has more space then us, lucky for them. Any way back to it.

After 184 uninterrupted miles of open road and a little stop for a motorhome lunch, we came to our first choice stop over only to find it empty. To tell you we get excited is an understatement and that’s because of a few reasons, being we all love a free stop over, we all love a beautiful village, we all love peace and quiet and we all love free electric. Well this had the whole package.

We are in a lovely village called Rebenacq, just south of Pau and what a find this was. They have made a free parking area for just five motorhomes to stay in at one end of the village in a dead end road with stunning views around. They also provide, free water and both waste point to use, including bins plus you can use the electric 3pm to 10pm for free. The socket works on a timer, so comes on at 3pm and off at 10pm, which is perfect if you just need to charge up some 240v items like the hand held Dyson and my Mac Book. I would of hated to of paid to charge a Dyson!

After about a hour another motorhome joined us and that was it for the night. So another great find, I must say Park4Night app has never let us down and it is the only one we use.

We have a like walk around the village and sat outside the local bar for a drink, like you do, before setting back to cook dinner and relax. The only noise I could hear that evening was just an owl and that was a lovely sound.

The next morning after breakfast it’s a short walk back into the centre for a morning coffee and a French baguette and the last French baguette for now as we need to move on and this time move countries.

Day 6 intends to be less miles today as we have a more ups and downs, yep we are taking a not so main road over the Pyrenees and why not, we like a view. Our crossing point was around 5,885 feet so not to high and a few twist and turns but I say that’s all part of the fun. I should just stick to the main routes, but that’s why I like google maps as I can have a peak first and choose to change the route.

What amazes me is that our motorhome is not small in anyway and yet it handles the road so well, yes I have to think about a few things a bit more as we are 7.9 metres long and pretty wide but I love taking her (the motorhome) on roads some may not.

We had a great drive up and over with very little traffic on route which was very nice indeed, so Welcome to Spain. Only around another 650 miles to go until we reach the far south coast of Spain.

Our first choice of location google took us via a route even I didn’t want to do, well I say that. We only decided this while on our way, the road turned into a very thin road going back up a mountain to which I was unsure of any passing places and with a low profile big motorhome we decided plan B and that’s very rare for us.

Plan B was a town called Jaca so a little different from all our other stops so far and more busy but sometimes you have to do these stops. On our last European tour we did many city stop overs so we know what to expect and now its will not just be owl noises tonight. a little traffic noise will be heard.

Even though this is a large town stop, it is once again a free stop over thanks to the town. This area has 24 places and thankfully we got 1 of the last 2, as soon as it got filled I am sure we saw more than 10 motorhomes drive in looking, but its now full so hope they have their plan B in place.

We have had a great couple of days, seen plenty on the way and again enjoyed the freedom of having a motorhome in Europe. You certainly could not do this trip any other way, especially with free stop overs. One thing I have noticed since coming over to Spain is, fuel is cheaper as the first 2 petrol stations we past the price is now 1.32 Euros a litre.

Day 5: Daily Costs:

SITE FEES: Free FUEL: £26.67 (Top up tank) DINING OUT: £6.86. TOTAL SPEND: £33.53

Day 4: Daily Costs:

SITE FEES: Free GROCERIES: £7.64 DINING OUT: £4.20. TOTAL SPEND £11.84

TOTAL RUNNING COST: £296.94 to date.

If you want to follow our whole route LIVE as we drive, we are using Polarsteps to track our driving route, so click HERE to see more and follow.

Day 5 Coordinates: 43.1569, -0.3971 (lat, lng) N 43°9′ 25′ W 0°23′ 50 (lat, lng) Rebenacq

Day 6 Coordinates: 42.5677, -0.5466 (lat, lng) N 42°34′ 4′ W 0°32′ 44′ (lat, lng) Jaca

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Happy and safe travels

Scott & Elaine