Why Can We Not Continue To Travel In Our Van As Tourists ?

So, when we got back to the ‘Little Fokker’, after our meal at the Chiringuito, on checking our local news we discovered that further restrictions were being implemented within the whole of the region of Andalusia with effect from midnight on Monday 9th November.

(As I have already recently published a short post with extracts from the official information website (www.andalusia.com) in respect of the new restrictions, I am not going to repeat them again in this particular post, other than, where appropriate, in relation to how that information and restrictions may now impact on us personally)

 

So our hastily made plans from earlier that afternoon had to now be hastily un-made. Now of course, we have asked ourselves the question, that perhaps some of you may already have been thinking yourselves, which is, Technically, we are ‘Tourists’, as we do not hold permanent residencia here in Spain, and we are driving a UK registered Motorhome, so, from reading other travel ‘Blogs’ and from watching a large number of vanlife ‘Vlogs’ on You Tube, of people currently in Europe, including Spain, it appears that some of the current movement restrictions here in Spain are not being applied to those from the motorhome travelling community, so ‘Why Can We Not Continue To Travel In Our Van As Tourists ?’.

The simple answer is that actually we probably could if we chose to do so, but we do feel that, unlike the majority of vanlifers whose travel diaries we subscribe to, we do actually own a property here, a ‘Home Residence’, so we cannot legitimately, and in all good conscience, claim to have no permanent residence to return to. The other thing is that we have lived here for between four and six months of the year, every year for the last five and a half years, so we have got to know our neighbours in our small mixed International community which also has a large proportion of Spanish residents, as well as quite a few other local people in our area, within the village of Castellon, the Marina area and within our local town of Sabinillas. They have come to know that we travel here on a regular basis, either in our car, or in the van, and so how would it look, and how would they react towards us, if they are being confined by these restrictions yet we are seen to be able to come and go as we please ? So their is an element of our own conscience involved, but also a great degree of respect for our fellow neigbours and the wider local community. Had we not have owned this bolt hole, then perhaps it would be a different story but then, perhaps, we would not have travelled here at all, given the circumstances ? But, at the end of the day, these are purely individual choices and I for one am not going to stand in judgement of anyone else or the choices that they make. If tourists were not welcome then the National Spanish Government would have most certainly have said so officially and the Police, whether that be the ‘Local Police’, the ‘Nacionale Police’ or the ‘Guardia Civil’ would have been instructed to turn people away at the border checkpoints which they often spontaneously set up at roundabouts and road junctions, but again it appears that provided the Vanlifers follow the three main basic principles, social distancing, wearing of face masks and compliance with the Curfew, relevant to the area they are travelling in or through, then they are happy to allow them to travel freely throughout Regions, Provinces and Municipalities.

So just by way of providing a level of understanding about how the new restrictions actually impact on ‘our’ future movements in the short term, until they are reviewed again on the 23rd November. As I have mentioned before, our bolt hole lay within the ‘Province’ of Malaga, which is one of the eight Provinces that make up the ‘Region’ of Andalusia. Each province is made up of a number of separate ‘Municipalities’, which can vary in size of area covered, the number of Cities/Towns/Villages within the municipality and of course the size of population. The Malaga Province alone consists of 103 separate ‘Municipalities’ and to give that some proportion of scale, Andalusia, as a ‘Region’, has over 1,760 separate Municipalites within it.

So by now you will know that we live in the Malaga Province, within the Municipality of ‘Manilva’, which unfortunately, under these new restrictions, is quite a relatively small Municipality with a total land mass boundary area of just 35km square. So, our Northern boundary is just on the outskirts of our  local town of Sabinillas, the natural boundary with the next Municipality being at the ‘Rio de Manilva’ (Manilva River), and the Southern Boundary being at the ‘Punta Chullera’, a historical landmark, with a distance of only 8km between these two points. The boundary goes inland up to the small town of Manilva which is literally just a few kilometres away, so our particular Municipality is not a massive area. For those of you who have followed my ramblings for some years it may give this confinement more emphasis if I tell you that we can no longer shop at our usual large ‘Mercadona’ supermarket or drive the short distance to Estepona, as these our both outside of our Northern Boundary and we cannot go to the Beach, at the area just fifteen minutes drive away, that we had given the nickname of ‘Motorhome Cove’ due to usually high number of vans that park up there over the Winter period, as this too falls outside of our Southern boundary.

We decided, that as we had until midnight the following day to get back to our bolt hole, we would remain at our current location overnight, as we had originally planned. We would also stay the following morning, as originally planned, but then, instead of re-locating to the alternative beach nightstop, where we had planned to stay the night and the majority of the following day, we would now leave our current location after lunch and then just head once again for our bolt hole, however, as the large Mercadona supermarket is on our route, the one that we will soon be prohibited to travel to, we will be calling in so that Shazza can re-stock with a few items.

So now back to where these current ramblings started…………

After the day visitors had all departed we got some other nocturnal visitors, not boy racers, but youngsters in cars who came and parked up, windows open, music blaring, but thank goodness for the 11:00pm Curfew, a hefty fine would be forthcoming if they were to be caught outside after that hour. There late night antics are certainly going to be curtailed after the new Curfew comes into force, commencing three hours earlier at 8pm !! It fell as silent as the grave and we slept well. Now I may have mentioned this before, once or twice, but why is that when we were both working we would give anything for a morning lay in, but now I am retired I am awake at 07:15am every single morning without fail ? Unlike Shazza who can sleep all day if I let her, once I am awake I have to get up, in the van the routine is turn on the water heater, put the gas kettle on, whilst tip-toing around so as not to awake one’s beloved, quite difficult in a van that is only six metres long and a little over one metre of that is taken up by the rear transverse bed with a ‘Don’t you dare wake me up” monster in it !! Back at the bolt hole with more rooms and my precious balcony, I do not have to be so careful about how much noise I make, within reason of course, early morning guitar playing is definately a no no !!

Because it is now Winter here in Spain too, sunrise is not until nearer 08:15am and the sun does not get up to any great height until nearer 9:00am these mornings, it has a longer lay in than me !! It is warm though and the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast another hot and sunny day, however, the original beach day plan has been shelved, it doesn’t really get that hot until midday and we would be departing at or around that time. The plan now, once the sleeping beauty had awoken, drunk her coffee, read all the morning news headlines on her iPad then got up, washed, dressed and had breakfast, was to explore more stretches of the sand dunes, via the wooden boardwalks and then we would take a final walk along the lovely sandy beach.

A spacious Park Up before the day visitor’s arrive

Lovely morning views with the fishing boats already out

We were not the only one’s enjoying the peaceful morning surroundings

There is something quite relaxing about the sound of waves gently lapping up onto the shoreline

Other’s making an early start to the day

We returned to the van, we briefly saw our neighbours, who had overnighted with us, and we exchanged the usual courtesy wave, they were a couple with a teenage daughter, we could see from their beachware that they were just heading down to the beach for another session of solar basting, and I observed that their van had a Portuguese registration.

A handful of cars had started to arrive, dog walkers and joggers in the main and then a Council van arrived and two men got out and proceeded to empty the handful of rubbish bins that were located in the car park area, then they moved into the Pine tree and boardwalk areas, picking up rubbish that previous day visitors had just irresponsibly discarded onto the ground. It really irritates me when I see this, especially when bins have been provided, but there are also clear signs asking people not to drop litter and to place it in the bins provided.

After a coffee, we got washed up and then proceeded to turn the van back into ‘Transport’ mode. We pulled away from this lovely location and we both felt a sense of disappointment that we were having to go home again and I have to confess at being slightly envious of all the fulltimers that did not have a bolt hole to run to, but we felt that because of our situation that we were, morally at least, doing the right thing.

So, another mini-adventure that has come to a premature end for us, we now have fourteen days before the next review of these current Covid measures, perhaps then, if everybody adheres to the social distancing, the wearing of face masks and the Curfews that are in place, we will ‘all’ begin to defeat the spread of this virus and life may start to get back to some sort of normality, although we are not sure what ‘Normal’ will actually look like in the future ? So, wherever you may be in the World, just continue to keep staying safe.

Edited with BlogPad Pro