Friday 25 January – Torrex to Estepona

Torrex to Estepona - 86 miles

We noticed last night it was a lot warmer when we went to bed and that carried on until this morning when it was already warm enough to leave off woolies when we surfaced. Moving on today but no rush as the plan is to go to a campsite at Estepona where we'll get sorted out ready to cross over to Morocco, and it's only an hour and a half.

So breakfast, service the van and back down onto the N340 coastal road rather than the A7. The coast between here and Malaga is slowly being developed but nothing like the well known spots like Torremolinos. The small towns and villages are clean, tidy and attractive (although bright sunshine and blue sea helps.....) and to our minds would make a nice place to over-winter if you prefer somewhere quieter. We enjoyed this section, even the heavy traffic in Rincon St Victoria, until we joined the A7 again to get round Malaga. We passed the new aire we used last year – it was chokka with a queue outside unsurprisingly.

The A7, once past Malaga, becomes an urban motorway, that is, it's not a full motorway but instead passes through the towns with many slip roads on and off. This makes it very busy and you need to pay attention as Spanish drivers give very little notice of their intentions. We realised we were not going to eke out the fuel until Morocco so dropped into a filling station; not having spotted any supermarkets we had to pay the “normal” rate, which is however still lots cheaper than the UK.

Parque Tropical is off one of the slip roads around 4 km before Estepona; it is signposted but if you don't know where it is it's easy to miss – but of course no problem for us having stayed here several times. A walk around found us an excellent big pitch in full sun, very nice as many pitches are small and being well shaded feel a tad gloomy. Got ourselves set up, a late lunch then enjoyed a couple of hours in the sun before tea.

With three nights booked we'll catch up on the washing and give the van a good clean and tidy up. The weather has definitely turned much warmer and we haven't got used to it yet – but there's plenty of time. Shorts and T-shirts tomorrow!