20th July 2017

A bright hot and sunny day today. We decided to drive in to Utiel for a bit of food shopping but first we would drive down to the lake and take a look and some photos. We turned right out of the gate and followed the rough tarmac campo road in the direction of the lake and we slowly made our way down and then the road turned to pot holes and gravel so we decided to stop and walk down as far as we wanted to. We got a fabulous view of the lake but it was obviously very much lower than normal probably nearer 20 meters rather than the 15 I originally thought. The photos don’t do the turquoise colour justice.

We turned around and drove back towards the campsite and then on into Villargordo, rather than joining the A3 motorway I decided to use the N111. This road was incredible with one lane in each direction and completely straight for about 10 kilometers but it did undulate so from the tops of the hills you could see a long way in each direction. We drove into Utiel and looked for the Mercadona supermarket but even with directions from a local bar owner where we had a coffee we didn’t find it but we did find a large Consum instead. After doing our shopping there we went looking for a Tabacos for Ingrid, a very nice lady lead us through the back streets to the main square and there was a Tabacos opposite the large church. The church was inaccessible as it was undergoing building works, the lady explained that it needed a new roof. After finding that Ingrid was out of luck we made our way back to the car and headed back down the N111 which had large fields of grapevines on both sides of the road and the high speed rail line ran alongside the road too. Back at the campsite we had lunch and settled for a quiet afternoon reading.

I walked around the campsite late afternoon and took some photos of the area. As an old village it was picturesque with the old village houses being turned into rental chalets.