Winter sun at Camping Didota

What a difference being in the warmth of the sun under clear blue skies makes. Shorts and flip flops, a walk along the beach, cerveza sitting in the sun.

We left home at 4.30am yesterday. Drove all the way through France, arriving in Spain at 9pm. By 9.30pm we were parked for the night and up at 7am for 4½ hours more driving.

The campsite we settled on is right on the beach. It's almost full, mainly of pensioners who are here for several months. We've already saved the £13.95 it cost for the ACSI card as 16 euros a night for two people with electricity is half the normal price.

We nearly dismissed the site upon seeing it for the first time. It lacks character. However, being full of pensioners it's nice and quiet and the facilities are superb.

The area is not somewhere we'd choose to come in high season but it's pleasant out of season with the hotels deserted and only a very few souls in the beach.

You can tell who are locals as they have as many layers of clothes as we did when we left Britain.

This afternoon we mooched along the coast on foot as far as the town of Oropesa to check out the train to Valencia. They run every 40 minutes and a ticket seems to cost less than nine euros. It was too difficult to work out if that's a return or not. Tomorrow is forecast to be sunny all day so that may be a cycling day. I'd like to cycle to Peniscola which looks beautiful and really interesting, as does the huge natural park we'll cycle through on the way.

Although we're kind of sad we're not in the Alps this winter break we certainly have no regrets at trying something new with weather like this.

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