Tuesday

Another silent night and we woke to the clearest day we’ve had here. First job was to return to the local Mercadona (supermarket) to buy some less potent wine than the 13.5% we got yesterday. We both recognised the danger of paying 5 euros for 5 litres when it has a high alcohol content, so this morning we plumped for the less potent 11.5% @ 4.50 euros, yes that's still for 5 litres! We then headed 50 miles up the coast to a paid aire where we could set ourselves up for the final week of off piste camping. An added bonus of this place, for Rachel anyway, is that around the corner is the largest Chinese Supermarket we've seen, they may need to re-stock their arts and crafts section! 

It's been the hottest day of our trip so far with the breeze being a welcome relief. I suppose as we are now just loitering for a week waiting for our flight home then it's rather pleasant circumstances in which to do it. The next two days are due to be similar weather (with less breeze) so we are driving 3 miles to the beach to meet up with some old friends, Neil & Kath, and some new ones, Merle & David and hopefully Gayle & Phil.

Cabo de Palos

View across to La Manga

Silent Nights

We aren’t ones for staying in the same place for very long, so it comes as a surprise that tonight will be our 5^th night without turning a wheel. High on our list of priorities for a suitable stopover is a quiet night, not something which is always guaranteed in Spain (or Portugal) with their culture of letting their dogs roam around at night behaving like animals! Here we have a silent night, either that or we’re going deaf in our old age.

We are noticing that all campervans come in various shades of orange, all coated in a layer, or layers, of sand and Harry was a prime example, having not seen water for over a month. To say we could build a sandcastle on his roof is maybe an exaggeration,, but I was surprised that the solar panel was still functioning. With the absence of a ladder I climbed up through the cab’s sunroof and proceeded to give everything on top a good clean. Getting down was a different matter, as I didn’t want to come back into the van wet and dirty. Fortunately we were parked close enough to a palm tree, making it perfect for a man with arms like an orang-utan. I descended the tree trunk as any self respecting primate would, which proved very entertaining to the passing tourists.

Notice the ladders in the background, some may see this as a tree.

We are presently at a place called Cabo de Palos, if you find Alicante on the map and sail due south about 60 miles, on the starboard side you will see a bit of land sticking out into The Med, we are parked by the lighthouse at a point separating the Costa Blanca from the Costa Calida.

Over the last couple of days driving through, what locally is described as, ‘the badlands and semi-desert’, we have seen some lovely things. You can tell a person is getting old when they start enthusing about the colour of flowers, or worse for a man, the pink of the cherry blossom on the trees! It’s become a usual sight to see oranges, lemons, olives and palm trees but over the last few days it’s been almond and cherry trees.

This morning we left Archena in rain and 11c, and travelled the 60 miles south to the coast, where it has been a very pleasant and sunny afternoon in the late teens, certainly worthy of t shirts and shorts for our stroll along the cliff top, taking in the sandy coves before eventually returning to the van via the marina and the promenade. If it’s a peaceful night we hope to stay here a few days.

Mula, with the castle on the hill we were about to walk up to!

View from near the top

"What a lovely shade of pink" Brian says

Caravaca de la Cruz & Mula

Not for the first time on this trip have I taken the van where, with hindsight, it would probably have been better not to!

Entering Caravaca de la Cruz there were no obvious parking place signs, so I just continued to follow those for the castle, the streets got narrower until we got down to those which were cobbled and just one vehicle width. As we approached an archway it immediately drew the comment from Rachel “Will we fit”? I was confident we would, and as we emerged unscathed into the polished surface of the pedestrianised courtyard with restaurants, gift shops etc, we were greeted by a local gentleman. Now his gesture I interpreted as ‘Oooh, that must’ve been difficult, well done, but you really shouldn’t be here’, Rachel interpreted it in a different way, not wanting anyone to be nasty to her husband, she quickly (as is her want) reciprocated with the hand gesture she thought he was using! There was no mistaking Rachel’s, which led to a quick discussion on the merits of doing such a thing in the confined space of a courtyard. It was immediately obvious there was no forward exit for a vehicle of Harry’s size, so I quickly assessed the turning possibilities, without cleaning up the restaurants tables and chairs, that’s when I caught sight of a policeman striding towards us in a rather purposeful manner. This is now starting to develop into the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun! Who said men can’t multi-task? The shiny pavement meant the steering wheel whizzed around effortlessly, so collecting tables and chairs as souvenirs didn’t seem to be the biggest problem. I gave the policeman a smile and wave in the manner of ‘Sorree…I’m an idiot, I know’, kind of way, and executed the quickest ‘3 point turn’ you’ve seen, leaving him in our wake. Now we just had Señor Psycho to deal with, this is how I imagined him to be after Rachel’s greeting. Another of my smiles and waves, this one out of the box labelled ‘Yes my wife is a little bit crazy’, to which he smiled and waved in acknowledgement and allowed us to escape to freedom.

After breaking loose from the confines of Plaza del Arco we found a more suitable place to park by the football stadium and walked back up to take in the tourist sights in a more relaxing fashion.

Our final 30 miles of the day were east to the small town of Mula where we are staying at the aire for the night. No more dramas for the day and we will probably remain in the province of Murcia for our final 2 weeks in Spain.

Of course we'll fit!

Welcome to Plaza del Arco, now which way is out?

Mula, more photos to follow when we get wifi

Monday

Yes it was worth it! United won 2-1, Rachel could tuck into a meal she hadn’t made (pie, peas, chips and gravy), I had a lovely grilled swordfish all washed down with a couple of pints.

This morning we departed Mojácar and headed 30 miles north to Heurcal-Overa, described as a place made up of two towns called, yes you guessed it, Heurcal and Overa. This seems to be the most interesting fact about the place.

When you can complete a 1,000 piece jigsaw in an afternoon it tells you two things, firstly, that the place you’re visiting isn’t great, and secondly, neither is the weather!

Our dear friends, and avid blog followers from west Cumbria, Nige & Sue, help to make us feel better by saying it’s been raining almost constantly all week back home. Nige says “We’ve been checking the weather in Seville and are envious”, so are we! But we are at the other end of the ‘county’ and this county isn’t like little Cumbria, it’s over 300 miles long! So this week it’s beautiful in Seville with cloudless skies and 20c+ temperatures, but for us further east it’s about 12c and blowing a hoolie! Nevertheless it is comforting to know that we are slightly better off than at home. Apparently the sun is scheduled to make an appearance later this week and after all that is the main reason we came all this way, as well as cycle, see different scenery, see vultures and generally chill out.

Neil and Kath, in their moto-kennel, are chasing us across the country and hopefully we will rendezvous for a night or two in a re-run of our Cadiz soiree, before we jump on a plane back home in just over 2 weeks.

Mojácar

Have you ever noticed that the base beat is the same for most popular hits? This was something we were contemplating during the early hours of the morning whilst lying in bed during DJ Night at the local Irish bar, which is just 50 metres away. At 3am the ‘thud, thud, thud’ of the base stopped, and the remaining stragglers made their more than merry ways home, or wherever they were going. Then the soothing sound of the waves could help us quickly drift off back to sleep.

It takes more than a disturbed nights sleep and a bit of rain to stop us from going for our planned walk. Well maybe the word ‘rain’ is over-stating the case a little, but there were definitely some speckles on the windscreen of the van this morning as we set off on our 7 mile walk. We had a lovely walk along the coast in blustery conditions and the sun did make a brief appearance on our return.

We are staying just one more night here, not to listen to the music, which will hopefully finish earlier, but because United are on telly at the said bar, so hopefully it’ll be a price worth paying.

Our parking place at Mojacar

This morning's coastal walk

View from our bedroom

Better Than Expected

This will be our third night in Dog Poo Car Park, a totally inaccurate description it now seems, but it will have to stick. Yes, it’s just another dusty car park, but the appeal lies in the town and the walking and cycling around here.

San José is a small ‘Spanish’ resort, I don’t mean because it is in Spain, but it’s more for the Spanish than the other well known big resorts. There are just a few hotels dotted around, all of which seem closed for the winter, but a vast array of bars and restaurants, with at least half of them open.

It has been particularly windy over the last two days so no return to the sea, but plenty of opportunity for walking in the warm sunshine. Due to the wind, sunbathing requires a little more inventiveness. Finding a sheltered spot on the beach was nigh on impossible so, with the beachfront hotel having a lovely sunken area by reception there was on one thing for it, deckchairs out and make use of the sun and shelter.

This morning's walk to the next beach along the coast

This building is here for a reason! The windiest part of our walk.

Genoveses Beach - a wind surfers paradise!

Return to Dog Poo Car Park

Autoglass/Car Glass did the business and got us back on the road as promised, so we departed Almería just before lunchtime and continued east.

We didn’t want a long drive so took a gamble and drove just 30 miles to a place we visited in November 2013. The name of the town is San José, but Rachel and I christened the campervan parking area as ‘Dog Poo Car Park’, for obvious reasons. Now you may wonder why we would want to return to a canine excrement coated parking area? The reasons are two-fold: Firstly, all the reviews since our visit have been positive and secondly, it was as far as we wanted to travel. I must say, that it makes a difference when the sun is shining, no, not to the dog poo, but to the approach to the town. I think last time the weather wasn’t great, and we were the only van there until a German van rolled up to keep us company. As the infamous parking area came into view it was obvious the place had become a bit of a favourite amongst the campervan fraternity as there were about 20 vans and not a sniff of anything brown and sticky.

Here’s a few photos to give you an idea of San José.

A couple of shots from The Med

The Infamous and maybe unfairly name Dog Poo Car Park

Monday

Monday was always going to be a kicking around day, whilst arrangements were made for the fitting of a new windscreen. If everything goes according to plan, and we all know that it rarely does, then we should be back on the road again with a new windscreen fitted by 12 noon tomorrow. We found a free camping, well car park to be more precise, right by the beach front in Almería and we’re only 1 mile away from the windscreen place.

The only real thing of note that we did today was a little drive to the peninsular of Cabo de Gata. Yes I know I’m getting old, but it was one of those roads that made me think, ‘this isn’t one of my better decisions in life’. Let’s just say that Rachel and I were a little ‘on edge’ in more senses than one!

Not my idea of a relaxing scenic drive!

An appropriately positioned mirror so you can see what you're going to hit.

Starting to relax

Fully relaxed

Photo Update 2 - The Wild West

Photo Update 1

A92 eastbound from Sierra Nevada

Guadix (troglodyte village)

Action shot from the Abla v Some Other Team, game

Quite a Day!

As we sit in the van, a glass of wine in hand, we gaze out across the Golfo de Almeria through a cracked windscreen and reflect on an 'interesting' day.

It all started this morning (obviously) as we headed east out of the snowy and mountainous Sierra Nevada and descended into the Tabernas Desert, apparently Europe's only desert. If you dig deeper you may find that it's only a semi-desert, but whatever it is we picked the only day in the year when it rains! Actually it was just a few raindrops and it soon brightened up to something one expects of desert-like weather.

Our visit here was two fold, firstly we enjoy scenery and have wanted to see 'first hand' this so called desert, and secondly, it's where all the spaghetti westerns were filmed so we wanted to visit Sweetwater, or whatever pseudo name was used for the filmset.

As we arrived at the ramshackle old hut, loosely masquerading as a check-in, I was held at gunpoint and robbed of 22 euros for the pleasure of driving down a dusty and bumpy track to Sweetwater. Parking on the outside of the fort entrance, we moseyed into town. There were several horses tied up at the stables to our left, and to our right the gallows in front of the sheriff's office. As we swung into the saloon the piano stopped playing (actually there wasn't a piano, just classic spaghetti western music being piped through the tannoy), with several gun-slinging cowboys propping up the bar. Every now and then there'd be the sound of a gunshot, which was quite unnerving as you never knew who was going to bite the dust. Actually I'll stop this drivel and let the photos do the talking when we eventually get WiFi.

After we'd seen all we wanted we rode out of town eastwards expecting some great desert scenery but were disappointed, the best we saw was near the filmsets. We stopped for lunch and planned our overnight stop, we plumped on the Cabo de Gata peninsular just east of Almeria. En route a stone was thrown up by a van which put 2 x 10" cracks across the windscreen. Hopefully we'll get a new one fitted tomorrow, but for the time being all we can do is open a bottle of wine, and take in the uninterrupted view of the sea just 50 metres away.

The Rain in Spain....

....Falls pretty much everywhere at the moment, and it looks like we're in for a wet weekend. On Thursday we had to come out of the sun after 2 hours to prevent burnt, Friday we were in jeans and jumpers tucked up in the van, well I suppose it is winter! There is something comforting about hearing the rain bouncing off the top of the van when we're nice and dry inside, maybe it rekindles distant memories of being in a tent which leaked in?!

We departed Torrox-Costa this morning (Saturday) and head up, in both latitude and altitude, via Granada to Guadix. Yes we did see the Alhambra Palace as we bypassed Granada on the motorway and we enjoyed the views of the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada. As we headed east towards Guadix we reached 4,500' feet where the snow was around us but the roads were fine.

Guadix is an attractive town with a troglodyte suburb. Although it is a tourist attraction it's only a small part of it which has had any investment so despite being interesting it wasn't always pleasing on the eye. We were invited into somebody's house/cave but kindly declined as we would feel uneasy snooping around somebody's house, unless we were buying it, and there was NO chance of that!

A further 30 miles east to our next aire at Abla, not a place one would immediately think of visiting, but for the comforts offered by an aire to us travelling types. As is frequently the case, the aire was next to a sports stadium where, by chance, there was a footy match in progress. Free entry, in fact I could probably got on as a sub, but my total contribution was to act as ball boy after the centre forward hoofed the ball out of the stadium and into the aire!

Note: Photos will follow when internet connection is reestablished.

Frigiliana

This was one of the villages (highlighted whilst at home) as a place worth visiting, and it didn’t disappoint. In Rachel’s words “I think it’s the best village we’ve been to”, and that’s saying something!

We cycled 6 miles along the coast to Nerja then 3 miles uphill (on turbo) to the village. What a lovely place, where do we start? Your typical whitewashed houses, narrow cobbled streets, lots of sun terraces taking in the view over the village and down to the Med, everything so clean, bars and restaurants (all with views of course), lots of craft and arty shops, historical buildings, the list goes on. The ride back down was a breeze, in more senses than one. The wind had got up a tad, and now we were travelling substantially quicker than on the way up, the wind chill factor made me consider rolling my sleeves down, but only consider. By the time we got down to the coast again it was noticeably warmer, and we had a pleasant tootle back to the van. Having done nearly 20 miles we thought we had earned a rest, so had a couple of hours sunbathing on the beach.