This comment deserves to be treated as a stand-alone readers letter. It concerns this morning's article on camper vans in the natural park of Cantilados de Maro-Cerro Gordo.

This problem has grown exponentially since 2020, it’s now virtually impossible to find a spot to park your car at a mirador to enjoy the view, even in winter.

Prior to lockdown 2020 there used to be a few dozen mostly ‘tourist-plated’ camper vans along this coast, staying for at most a few days at a time, today there are hundreds, and it is every day, all day – not just weekends and holidays.

In summer they are both sides of the road, many parked illegally. I have never seen a police patrol taking any interest since the concerted effort several years ago to clear the campers from the Maro car park and the area around the Maro spring.

Is there some legal obstacle that prevents local councils from operating rest areas with basic facilities (water/waste disposal/rubbish disposal) for a nominal charge to cover operating costs, similar to the French system of municipal sites? If this type of facility was made available at an adequate scale it would then surely be possible to enforce a ‘no overnight stopping’ policy along the coast, with a significant fine for transgressions.

Existing commercially run sites are too expensive and too small to cater for the numbers involved.

I might sound anti-camper, but I’m not. I have owned and used a caravan for many years (throughout Europe) and I can only think of a handful of times that I have ‘wild camped’ in a roadside stopping place or car park and then that was usually due to emergency situations.

George