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Really peaceful here on this site. We have a good tidy up and put away all the fresh laundry before leaving the site and popping into El Rocio town. In May almost a million pilgrims come here to pay homage to La Virgen d'El Rocio, bringing decorated carriages and prancing stallions.
Today the town is almost deserted, but looks like something out of a wild west film set. The streets are rutted sand, flanked by low timbered and stuccoed buildings. Ranch fencing and hitching rails separate them from traffic. The white church stands in the sandy main square beside which starts the enormous lake, habitation for a variety of water-birds from plovers to flamingos.
It would be worth staying and there is not only the campsite, but also an area to 'circle the wagons', but as we are almost out of gas we need to find some today and the nearest LPG station is in Huelva.
The drive there takes is along the edge of the Donana national park which extends back to Sanlucar. Long straight roads run through acres of sand pines, their green pompom tops looking bright in the sun above the golden sand floor of the forest.
Approaching Huelva is a different story; the road goes through a huge refinery and oil-industry complex then alongside the docks. We get separated on a roundabout as we aim for the LPG station but radio to say we'll meet there. We pass a Cepsa station selling LPG but we are meeting at the Repsol. Then the road is shut off by roadworks, so we radio to meet at Cepsa. We arrive to find Nick W and an attendant trying to detach the hose from their van. Despite all efforts and various adaptors the Cepsa pump won't fit so we have to find the Repsol around the back streets. Once there we are serviced by an attendant in very little time but the whole fiasco of getting gas has taken the best part of an hour.
We go back to an aire for lunch but it's not very good; small parking spaces near the noisy motorway bridge with a view of industrial Huelva.
An hour's drive along a quiet motorway brings us to another familiar bridge, the crossing of which brings us into Portugal and through Castro Marim where we stayed last year. From there it's about 4 miles to Vila Real de Sant Antonia. Although the camperstop is busy we find adjacent spaces, park up and head past the marina, across the road into town where the black and white pavements tell us we're on Portuguese soil.
The old barrack house takes up one whole block, with a domed tower on each of its four corners. The main square has a central obelisk with black and white segments radiating out to a perimeter of orange trees.
In the pedestrianised area every other shop seems to sell towelling or kitchenware, but there are plenty of cafes so we sit in the sun with a beer and use its wifi before returning to the van.
It gets dark earlier tonight as Portugal works to GMT.
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