Spain trip April 2026

Day 1 - Leave for ferry

Day 3 - Drive to Campsite

Day 4 - Shopping and relax

Day1 17/04

Up early, some breakfast then off we went as van had been packed the night before.  Had plenty of time as leaving at 6am - Edinburgh to Portsmouth with ferry boarding at 9pm.

Drive down was painless, a couple of small delays due to roadworks but nothing big.  Stopped off a couple of times including the usual Tebay stop for some nice food and a coffee.

Arrived at Portsmouth dock in plenty of time:

After a relaxing wait it was on board, Straight to club lounge for some food then along to out room.

Next day i went out for a walk on deck, some amazing views

Overall the journey to Santander went very smoothly.  The new EES system was in place but we luckily got off the ferry pretty quickly, so up to the booth, out the van, fingerprints, face scan and on our way.

Day 3 19/04 - Drive to Alicante (El Campello)

A long but relaxed drive from Santander to Alicante.  It took roughly 9 hours but with two of us to share the drive it went well with only a couple of stops (Oh, and a fill up of fuel at the much cheaper Spanish fuel stations).  We followed the rather good Spanish motorway paying the tolls as it makes the journey a lot easier

One of the stop offs we made a nice coffee in the van and took in some nice views.  

Arrived at Camper Area 7 before the 8:30pm cut off which turned out to be more important than realised (more on that later).

Booked in then setup in our pitch, then off into the local town for some nice food.

Van pitched up

Down to a very nice restaurant with this view

Had a tasty paella then a walk along the beach, warm, sea was pretty calm and just a great feeling.

Day 4 20/04- and relax

After a full on day getting to the site we decided to just chill today… well that was the plan…

Roughly 17k steps later we had gone on a walk, gone to a large supermarket for provisions, quite amazing the fresh food choices here compared to the UK, and also another walk down to the beach.  A really nice day, and overall was still relaxing as great weather ☀ and scenery 🌊.

Day 5 21/04 - buggy safari