A pleasant start to our day morning. The owner take his three greyhounds for their walk and we can see them bounding across the field below. There are also hundreds of finches all around and a strong smell of wood smoke in the air.

We set off at 11:00 towards Tarragona, a port with a lot of Roman history. Shortly after we join the motorway traffic comes to a standstill at the intersection we need. We wait a while before agreeing to take the alternative route. This is not only wall to wall trucks, but adds 1.5 hours to our journey time so we pause for lunch in a layby before reaching Tarragona. The outskirts are all coloured high-rise and not attractive, and when we reach the car park we had programmed into Snoopy, we find it's a height restricted, undercover one. As we drive around the city we see some of the older attractions but cannot park until we find ourselves down on the sea-front. It's now 15:00 and too late to bother getting out so we search for tonight's stop.

Our journey takes us through Tarragona's marina area which is modern and attractive. The harbour is lined with mega-yachts, enormous private vessels with some as large as 100m long.

The main road climbs towards the snowy mountains, often with views of the sea on the other side.

To reach our stopover we have to cross the Delta d L'Ebre, a huge wetland like the Carmargue. We drive about 8 or 9 miles along a succession of dykes a few feet above acres of rice plantations, most of which will probably end up in paella dishes.

We reach the camper stop at 17:00 and park overlooking the reed-edged wetlands towards a range of mountains. We see a flock of starlings gathering but they disappear before they reach the 'black cloud' density we've watched on TV

The wind whips across this area unhindered, and as we batten down after sunset we reflect that we've been tossed about less crossing the Bay of Biscay.

So what looked like a day that refused to go to plan, turned out to be one of those happy accidents where we find ourselves somewhere we never intended to be, but which is an absolute delight.