It was the moment we'd been dreading since we'd packed up our home and left London, more than a week and 2,000km previously: our first set of hairpin bends. We peered out of the window and traced the road as it hauled itself up the cliff and then fell back down to the valley floor in a series of nausea-inducing zig-zags. We were at the entrance of the 1,000m-high Despeñaperros gorge, which slices through the Sierra Morena in southern Spain, and we were in a 20ft motorhome.
Long vehicles and mountain passes do not generally make for relaxing drives. Throw in a car-sick toddler, thundering lorries and our own lack of motorhome driving experience, and you complete the picture.
I had cowardly navigated our way down from Calais, avoiding all manner of vehicular challenges; we bypassed Paris by 100 miles and slipped over the border near Biarritz with the snow-capped Pyrenees just a distant smudge out of the left-hand window, and stuck to what pass for motorways in Spain. But our fears were not realised. We drove through the gorge without incident and a month later were merrily traversing the most picturesque of twisting mountain passes with little more concern than the local wine merchant after a particularly good lunch. By that time, we'd learned the identity of the greatest danger to motorhomes: overhanging trees and low-slung balconies. Unfortunately, we'd found out the hard way.
Near Cadiz, a particularly lopsided tree took out the awning and crushed the top right-hand corner of our shiny new van. How were we going to last a year if this happened in the first week?
The plan, cooked up one winter's day last year when the grey skies over London threatened never to dissolve, was simple. Resign from our jobs, rent out our house and travel for a year before Isaac, our 18-month-old son, became embroiled in the school system. Although we'd never so much as camped before, the idea of a motorhome appealed. Our friends laughed, colleagues sniggered. A caravan? No, we explained, a motorhome. We would condense our lives into one self-contained travelling room and take off wherever we wanted.
From the southernmost tip of Spain we would work our way northwards and east; through Italy and then on to Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia before catching a boat to Finland. If we were lucky, we would spend the next eight months in sunshine. Hopefully, we'd get to the Arctic Circle at some point in August and then turn the van round and head back down through Scandinavia and western Europe.
Sketching out a rough route was relatively easy compared to finding the van. We knew nothing about them. Heaving shelves of hobby magazines opened a door on to the strange, insular world of motorhoming with its specialist clubs, shows and jargon. "Grey water", for example, is what's left after washing up. "Black water" is what you've got when the chemical loo is full.
The magazines - Practical Motorhomes, MMM (Motorhome and Motorcaravan Monthly) - displayed a bewildering array of makes, models and layouts: Auto Roller, Auto Sleeper, Swift, A-class, low-profile, coach-built, fixed-bed, side dinette. We studied the literature over the summer as the rain drummed away in our tiny backyard, but we still didn't have a clue.
In the autumn, we trudged around two outdoor shows, one held in the vast Royal Showground outside Bath, the other at Earls Court. The shows were crowded, but curiously suburban affairs as dozens of middle-aged couples clambered aboard show vehicles to ooh and aah over ingeniously designed folding tea-towel driers and dinky ovens.
I had thought that motorhomes were bought by people who couldn't afford to stay in hotels. How wrong I was. The cheapest vans start at around £27,000 and prices rapidly rise through the 30s, 40s and 50s, to the luxury end of the market. Winnebagos, with slide-out sides, chandeliers and Jacuzzis, won't leave any change out of £100,000. Secondhand vehicles hold their value, too, giving up no more than £1,000 a year.
The aged vans in our price range looked like Laura Ashley dream homes in miniature. Chintzy florals, gilt handles and stencils on country pine veneer. Motorhome interiors lag behind the rest of the design world by a good 20 years, we discovered.
Salvation came from Germany, where motorhoming is not entirely the province of the middle aged. The internal layout and finishes tend to be simple and sleek. Secondhand vans, we discovered via a number of German websites, cost about a third less than in the UK. Just before Christmas we flew to Munich and came home three days later, £17,000 poorer, but the excited owners of a one-year-old Dethleffs 5881.
It might have looked big from the outside - and parked outside our house in Hackney, it looked huge, but the interior was pretty compact. Our bed was up in the Luton cab, reached via a ridiculously vertical ladder.
Downstairs we had a three-ring cooker, sink, fridge and plenty of cupboards for plates and food. Above the table and benches - known as a dinette in motorhoming circles - were the book cupboards. Moving backwards, we had a small bathroom with a chemical toilet, basin and shower; a miniscule wardrobe and bunk beds.
An estate agent would describe it as bijou, but everything worked beautifully. At the flick of a switch we had hot water and lights. In northern France, we parked for the night next to huge mounds of frozen snow but the central heating, run from bottled gas stored in a kind of internal garage (accessed from outside), warmed the van up in minutes.
We had chosen to start our travels in Andalucia for the same reason as thousands of other northern Europeans. In early February, it was warm enough to be outside from breakfast to dusk. While the locals were still snuggling into their jumpers and furs (summer doesn't start in Spain until June, no matter what the thermometer says), the campsites were a feast of bronzing, wrinkled flesh. Not only are most sites open throughout the year on the Costa del Sol, many are crowded. Reductions for long stays encourage people to set up a semi-permanent home. Michelle had meant to stay at Camping Las Dunas, in El Puerto Santa Maria, for one night on her way to Portugal, but a month later she was still there. David and Jean had been at Los Escullos, near Almeria, since November. Stay for the entire winter season and the rent works out at less than €50 a week.
Plastic water bottles, cut up and potted with herbs, geraniums and aloe vera; washing lines strung between palm trees; sleeping dogs; cats on leads; and satellite dishes poking out from every roof make the campsites seem like salubrious favelas. Bingo nights and barbecues were the main entertainment. The English, Dutch and Germans constituted the largest number of overwinterers with a fair smattering of Austrian, Swiss and French.
Unfortunately for Isaac, there were few children around. But we hung out on the beach and sidled up to local kids, and made up for the lack of friends with lots of bike rides, ball-kicking and sandcastles.
Once the awning was fixed, we started lazily making our way east along the coast, darting into the hills when we'd had enough of the sea. Some nights we didn't bother with a campsite, but good places were hard to find along much of the coast. The best areas for wild camping were the desert-like national parks around Almeria.
What have we learned so far from our time on the road? That we must drive with an empty waste tank and the water pipes open if we don't want our van to smell like a sewage plant; that you need different gas cylinders for just about every European country. We are constantly on tree patrol. And, despite warnings from well-meaning friends and family, I think we are going to make it to the Arctic Circle without killing each other, or ourselves.
Way to go
Getting there: P&O Ferries (08705 202020, proferries.com) offers a standard return Dover-Calais for a motorhome and up to nine passengers from £243. For motorhome hire, see ashtonsgroup.com/Spain/car-rental-spain.htm and auto-europe.co.uk/motorhomes.cfm?pucountry=Spain. For a good selection of secondhand motorhomes, see mobile.de.
Recommended campsites: Camping Las Dunas, El Puerto de Santa Maria (+956 87 22 10). Big, cheap and child friendly. €15 per night. Camping el Sur, Ronda (+952 87 59 39). Peaceful site in beautiful setting. €20 per night. Camping Tarifa (+956 68 47 78). Friendly site popular with windsurfers. €19 per night. Camping Motel Sierra Nevada, Granada (+958 15 00 62). Well positioned for visiting Granada. €22 per night. Camping Los Escullos, Cabo de Gata, Almeria (+950 38 98 11). Friendly site in national park. €16.90 per night.
Further information: The Spanish Tourist Office (020-7486 8077, 24-hour brochure line 09063 640630, tourspain.co.uk, tourspain.es).
Country code: 0034.
Ferry time Dover-Calais: 75mins.
Time difference: +1hr.
£1 = 1.40 euros.
