Bonterra Camping, Benicassim

January 04, 2023

Our first proper stop was Bonterra Camping, in the town of Benicassim. Benicassim is a Spanish resort which has some lovely beaches lined with art deco villas. The campsite is on the edge of the town and to get to the site from the N340 coast road you have to go through the town. There are three exits off the N340 for Benicasssim and we took the north exit on the basis that the campsite is at the northan edge of the towm. Unfortunately this route whilst closet to the camp site takes you into the old town down a narrow street which was lined with parked cars. Luckily we just squeezed through. We now know to use the southern exit and dive straight through the town on Grande Avenue Jaume 1 as this road has plenty of space and takes you right to the roundabout outside the sight entrance.

The form here was to leave the the car & van and have a walk around to find your pitch. We picked a pitch without thinking it through too much. Again a lesson learnt. Whilst pitches on Spanish campsites are fairly spacious access is tricky. Without motor movers on Bill Bailey we'd have been screwed. I managed to just get Bill Bailey into the little avenue or "Casse" on the back of big O but from then on it was a 198 point turn on the movers to get the van set up. It would later turn out that our area of the site was populated with elderly Germans who seemed only interested in sweeping up leaves and hanging their pants out to dry .

The site is lovely, well maintained and in a great location if a little urban for us. A few minutes walk takes you to the beaches which are great. Out the back gate of the site is a disused railway line which has been turned into a cycle/walking track. This runs along the coast and was a great walk or cycle.

Walking onto the beach that first day, seeing the med with the temperature 23c we were reminded why we had done this.

On day 2 the orange sellers arrived and a bottle of orange liquor, a pot of marmalade and 1kg bag of clementines were acquired. The done thing seemed to be to hang your clementines from a tree in your pitch, why not😁.

We took two trips into the mountains, the first was to Desert de las Palmes, which is the mountain nature reserve situated behind Benicassim. The drive up was a bit hairy made worse by the made cyclists coming down the mountain really fast, how they manage to get around the switch back hairpin bends is a mystery. We did a walk from the visitors centre up to a giant cross on top of the mountain. The views were amazing and walking in T shits on a mountain in December was a bit strange particularly as a few weeks before we had been walking in the English lake district!

The second mountain trip took us to Serra d'Espada. We stopped on a trail just outside the village of Ain and walked up a trail in the mountains. It was utterly stunning. After our walk we had a picnic out the back of Big O the set off home the long way. Helen took us on a single track mountain road which had stunning views but was a bit of a challenging drive😅