We’ve been enjoying ourselves meandering through France and Spain on our way to our destination Camping Cabopino at Marbella. After staying at Zarautz, the only campsite so far with a reasonable amount of campers due to the area known for surfing, we drove to Salamanca for Friday evening intending to stay a night or two and explore, but worried about regional lock downs decided if there is a choice, we’d rather be locked down at our destination. So, having stayed only one night at another large campsite with only a couple of other campers we left early Saturday morning for as far South as our car would take us. We settled for our drive and noticed the further South we go, the emptier the roads are and the fewer lorries overtaking us whilst enjoying the vistas of spectacular mountains, lakes and wild life. Loads for us to look at and after 10 days together, new subjects to chat about.
We arrived Merida, which was one of the Roman Empire’s most important cities, having more Roman monuments than any other city in Spain and aimed for the only campsite, found as a dot on google maps. Having pitched up, we moved to the bar for a well earned beer or two for Steve. The Spanish owners had a small group of friends at an outside table, celebrating a birthday whilst traditional flamenco music on high volume played in the background. Imagine our surprise when we were invited to join the group (socially distanced of course) and share the birthday cake which was a biscuit layered nougat ice cream. Yum. The bar and restaurant were spotless and our dinner later that evening delicious. We looked up Merida and found it to be a Heritage Roman City, but once again worried about regional lockdowns we continued to our destination Sunday morning.
After the benefit of an extra hour in bed with the clocks going back, we settled for a full day’s driving, bearing in mind our top speed is 40 – 45 downhill. Passing through Seville the motorway was suddenly transformed being lined either side with palm trees and after 440 km we arrived at our Winter booked campsite www.campingcabopino.com.
The views along the Silver Route, which crosses from South to North of Spain, from Seville to Gijón, through heritage cities like Mérida, Salamanca, León and Astorga, this is the historic Roman road which ran between Northern and Southern Spain, one of the most important on the Iberian Peninsula at that time, covering the four regions Andalusia, Extremadura, Asturias and Castilla y León. You can see here our route from Caen to the campsite.
