Saturday, 4 February we leave Cordoba and sure enough, when we put the ticket in (with the wrong numberplate printed) the system knows we’ve been in Cordoba for two nights and sets the charge at €46. It’s not cheap, but well worth it for the location and security. The weather still looks fair so we’ve decided to go back to the Parque Nacional y Natural de Doñana south of Seville, in search of azure winged magpies.
We left Cordoba at 0930 and stopped at Ecija, hoping to find coffee, chocolate and churros. Having driven into the town centre, we’re hailed by a local and told to follow him to drive round the one-way system out of the narrow streets to a free carpark for camper vans. He explains how we can then walk back into town, giving us an interesting book about the area. Given that our Spanish amounts to asking for a couple of beers and the usual friendly greetings, we seem to be doing OK, everyone is extremely helpful. We met another helpful fuel attendant when trying to fill up with diesel and LPG later in the day, who sorted out the automatic payment systems so that we made a single payment for both fuels. Only 130 miles, and, after considerable research we decided on the large camping ground at El Rocío as our base for a few days in the Parque Nacional y Natural de Doñana.
Having checked in, we ride the bikes down to El Rocío for a quick recce before it gets dark and are amazed to find we seem to have arrived on a festival weekend!
