Me and Mrs OF are just at the end of 10 days in Fuerteventura, the weather hasn’t been as sunny / warm as I expected certainly not for lying around on the beach. Im guessing it’s still a lot nicer than home 🤔 So we are now talking about going for longer next year , possibly a month? We are both retired so no work commitments. Can it be done at a reasonable cost does anybody know ? Ideally a one bed apartment so we can cater for ourselves .
Me personally I’d happily live out what days I have left just bumming around out here but I know it would be way too hot for me in the Summer and I’d miss my riding 😔 I’ve briefly thought about buying an appartment to rent out but quickly dismissed that .
I guess once I get home and get into whatever counts as a routine and get back out on the bike February only being a short month things will start picking up ?

Was watching a Benidorm thing

Why do pensioners come to Benidorm in January

TBH out of season should always get you a good rate.

I live Spain Murcia/Almeria way and brr it’s been a bit chilly the last week but Christmas was pretty warm and yep the summer riding has to be done in the morning.

Oddly I actually don’t mind Benidorm out of season.

Me personally I’d happily live out what days I have left just bumming around out here but I know it would be way too hot for me in the Summer and I’d miss my riding 😔 I’ve briefly thought about buying an appartment to rent out but quickly dismissed that .

If you’re not set on an island there are reasonable prices on apartments in the less well known places but there are also static caravans in Spain.

I know a guy who retired early and goes to Calpe from New Year until Easter every year. They rent an apartment set back from the newer shinier places nearer the beach.
There are a fair few retired folks he knows, a lot from the trips out there. Every sunny day there are white haired teams heading out climbing and cycling (mainly road). The regulars swear it’s the only way to do winter.

My ex in laws do it, have been for the last 5 or 6 years. Bugger off (from Sweden, not the UK) mid jan after all the christmas, New year and birthday excitement has died down (have 4 family birthdays between NYE and the 12th).

FiL spends ages looking for cheap flights and apartments with a cheaper long stay rate. So they have to pay for 29 nights, usually gets them down to around €30-35 a night for a one bedroom apartment and €20 a day for a hire car. Then back mid feb for ~10 days while they do “stuff” at home, pick up new prescriptions etc.
Then back again for a fortnight-three weeks. Simple straightforward self catering etc.

First trip is usually deep south of Spain or the Canaries, second one to the Balearics or costa del sol ish.
They usually budget on just over €1000 each for the four weeks. And about 650 for the fortnight.

Then they come back and collect the camper and spend the summer touring scandi beaches and lakes. Then back to spain or italy for 3-4 weeks in october-november when the camper goes back into storage.

Thanks folks some food for thought 👍

Yes if you go for a month or 2 you’ll get some good weather. Canaries and Southern Spain for a week holiday this time of year is always a gamble as you can get a cooler or rainier week. It’s still winter there. I was in Granada area for a month last January and we had amazing weather. Low 20’s no rain. Apparently it was unusual though and looking at the weather this week it was only 10/11 degrees high with lows of 3.

Forget all this northern hemisphere rubbish…
I’m just back from a couple of months in NZ – I wish I had stayed.
Now saving up to do the same thing next year

We had a similar thought the last time we went to Spain (just pre-Covid). The longest we could book at the hotel in Alteat was 55 days… off-season rates with half-board were comparable to our heating bills in our draughty house in Yorkshire. Might be different post-Covid cost wise but it was tempting at the time. I was already self-employed and working from home so I could have worked from there. OH was still going into the office so it would have been trickier for him. Post-covid neither of us goes into the office so we’ve moved to France.

With Calp I think there’s a good tram system that extends to Alicante so you may not need a car and still have easy access to a lot of places to explore or do tram and ride and you have easy access to the high speed rail network if you want a romantic weekend away in another part of Spain.

The DoD Spanish hideaway is probably 16 miles from the beaches and oddly whilst being in the campo is also only mins away from a large shopping centre the only downside is everything isn’t that walkable and we have no trams.
(We do have very nice buses but tbh the timetables and frequency don’t make them much use) which makes a car pretty necessary here although the roads are great. Parking not always so.

They have also ripped out the local trains whilst putting the new High Speed link but when that’s in (a few years time) it’ll be great as the trains prices are cheap and fantastic compared to the U.K.

My plan is to move ‘somewhere’ with a more walkable environment when I retire.

If your around the holiday areas you also won’t much difficulty with the language but tbh that only really is part of the fun when you are here long time and need to engage with bureaucracy or medical issues.

We didn’t hire a car in Altea. There was a coach from Alicante airport and we rode everywhere on our bikes.