Campervan Therapy

Our dash from San Sebastian to the Mediterranean town of L’Ampolla involves battering rain in Zaragoza’s only campsite open for miles.

The drive from Zaragoza to Lleida is forbidding, with its bleached fields and mountains mined away to resemble a row of bad teeth. But my heart lifts as we turn off at Lleida to trace the path of the Ebro River, and onto a minor local road to L’Ampolla through lush fields of olives, carob and fruit trees frothed with pink blossom.

L’Ampolla sits in the curve of Fangar bay, which edges the Ebro Delta, its lighthouse winking in the distance, the water a blue mirror. At the end of the esplanade are the rugged red cliffs of Cap Roig.

There’s a series of small coves, a backdrop of blue-hued mountains and the sun is shining. I set out to explore as Seán is still marking frantically, to meet his deadlines.

L’Ampolla is still a fishing village, and you can watch the trawlers returning to town at sunset each evening. But it’s also got a fantastic promenade, lined with sculptures and boards about the history of the town, which survived Berber and Turkish pirate attacks, and a brutal time in the Spanish Civil War when the fascist bombers focussed on it as it had a railway and they could reach it easily from their base in Mallorca.

My favourite sculptures are the elongated bronze man reading his book by the beach and the toddlers climbing up an arch, looking down on us. There’s also a thought-provoking engraving of past kings, rulers, and churchmen called ‘The Ship of History’, including Charles I of Spain, Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, along with Pope Adrian, who set off for Rome from here, Martin Luther and the corsair, Hayreddin Barbarossa.

These characters are presented as chickens, sheep and goats in a critique of how ordinary people suffered from these power-players. The information board tells of how local people had to head inland away from the corsair raids as Barbarossa took advantage of all the battles for power between the Christian kings. Luckily the strip of land just inland had olive groves, the Ebro River full of fish and white goats which kept the people fed.

Standing by the bunker built to defend the coast in the Civil War, the irony is not lost on me as the sun shimmers on the blue sea and such human cost seems far away.

I walk by the cliffs with their coves below and the blue sea stretching out into the Delta’s arm of land, the cliffs studded with the cerise bells of the kalanchoe Plant.

Later, Seán joins me for a cycle out onto the Delta to lagoon’s hides. 

Cormorants, egrets, terns, dunlins and snipe are busy feeding today and I’m lucky enough to spot a marsh harrier and hear the bittern call. Lipstick pink mallow flowers and glasswort flourish in the saltmarsh too.

We end the day with Van Morrison serenading us in the Lo Tipic Restaurant overlooking the port, feasting on tempura vegetables, braised artichoke, tuna and griddled calamari.

Walking back to the campsite, Orion is holding his torch up high and the sea laps at the rocks by our feet.