Minor incident in Valencia

That night we decided to stay out at Trabucador and wild camp with the other vans there. The Guardia Civil came out and had a look at who was there in the evening but didn’t seem fussed that there were people staying there and no-one was asked to move. We had a few beers as the sun went down and ste went out again for a quick evening session. As it got dark the wind really picked-up, the 40 knots that had been forecast for the daytime had definitely arrived. Our van was side on to the wind so as it increased it really started to rock. We sleep a little bit but the rocking was a bit off putting and in the early hours we moved our van to face the wind so we didn’t get knocked over if it went really crazy. Neither of us slept particularly well and early the next morning it was still hooning, the highest reading Ste got on the wind meter was 53mph! We hung around a bit to see if it dropped off through the morning and watched a crazy German head out on a 5 meter after a launch which saw him narrowly avoid the wooden pier. Even the local that turned-up seemed to think it was a bad idea so we thought it best to give-up and head off.

We drove on down to Oliva south of Valencia. The drive down was going nice and smoothly and we thought we may be able to get an evening session in, that was before a dopey Spanish bloke decided to pull slowly across from the opposite side of the road directly in front of our van going at 60mph. I had seen the guy move slowly to pull out then hesitate, and had thought he had seen a large white van heading along the road. Apparently not, he later said he was watching the restaurant he was pulling into and thinking of his lunch which was why he didn’t spot us. I slammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid his car, skidded for about 10 metres to the side of the road and narrowly avoided slamming into the parked cars in front of the restaurant. As soon as we stopped, a bit shaken up and not happy that someone had managed to hit our van I jumped out and had a good shout at the driver asking him what the hell he was doing. He admitted it was his fault straight away and we took some time exchanging all our details, getting photos of the damage and details of witnesses in case we had any problems claiming later. The rest of the journey passed uneventfully and we arrived in Oliva and checked into the next campsite.

There was no wind that evening but the next day after lazing around on the beach and playing Frisbee it built up to something decent in the evening. Ste tried the 16 scorpion for the first time and we both worked on our wave technique, struggling a bit to stay upwind.