The secret to a happy life lies in small, kind gestures.
Geraldine and Caroline flew back to England on Tuesday evening, leaving four of us at Casa Carisma to clean up and close down. So Wednesday morning was spent doing just that, then after lunch Rodney and I said our farewells to Russell and Paul and climbed back on board Eileen. With fresh orange juice stowed in the fridge, six super fresh lemons, some lavender flowers and a bottle of Paul’s cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, we set off for the Mediterranean coast at Aguilas. First stop was at an enormous Eroski supermarket where there were twenty checkouts, only one open and we were two of only half a dozen customers. Travelling north-east, the road ran vaguely parallel with the coast whilst twisting and turning along the edge of the Sierra Almenara.
This made for a slow but interesting journey, so by the time we reached Bolnuevo we decided to pull into Camping Playa de Mazarron. Conveniently, it is actually within a village and is right on a beach, so two nights seemed like a good idea. Annoyingly, on the last day of April, I woke up with a streaming snotty nose; where did that come from? When we dawdled along the beach in the late morning hazy sunshine, my tap continued to dribble. Why is it good to drink lots of fluids when you already feel like a tap that won’t turn off? But that’s what we did at a beachside tapas bar while listening to the ‘league of nations’ around us.
Second annoying event, our internet allowance ran out and there was nowhere to top up. Third annoying event of the day, my cough started, ouch. And then the next day turned out to be a public holiday and it’s a long weekend for Spain, so there was no chance of purchasing a top-up till Monday; ah well, we got lots of reading done……
May Day arrived and we headed over the Sierra de la Muella to Cartagena. As expected, almost everything was closed, but we found the Café Kuss on Calle del Carmen and sat outside to take in the midday ambience. Just as we were tucking in to our drinks and empanadilla (mine was black pudding and pear, absolutely delicioso), a police car cruised slowly past followed by around thirty protestors with placards, shouting for…….. we know not what? As the ambience and Spanish music settled in again, another police car came past, this time followed by hundreds of protestors frantically waving their plastic flags. Google translate seems to be failing me as I cannot work out whether they were protesting, or just voicing an opinion, but everyone seemed very cheerful and chatty, so we left them gathering in the Plaza de Heroes del Cavite and wandered down to the waterfront.
The massive cruise ship, ‘The World’ (seems like an overly pretentious name to me) was in port and until I saw the front of it, I honestly thought I was looking at an apartment block!
Our stop for the next three nights (for cough and cold recovery) was at Caravaning La Manga at La Manga del Mar Menor on the southern end of the Coast Blanca. It’s a big site with 950 placements, so we were expecting plastic wristbands and ugly rows of campervans and we’ve been put in Sector P which sounds rather prison-like. But it’s surprisingly quiet and the placements are very private; each surrounded by high hedges on three sides. We’re a full 1km from the reception and supermarket, we’re right down at the beach end; which had me excited when we parked Eileen. But having walked through to the beach, it seems a bit of a dump. Spain just doesn’t seem to have beautiful beaches…….but then maybe we’ll find better ones further up north. Then again, it’s not just the beaches, everywhere seems to look like a building site and a lot of it actually is. There are so many derelict old buildings and so many more half-built, unfinished, derelict apartment blocks. It really is quite sad to see.
That evening Rodney cooked up some steak, which according to the label and Google Translate, it was ‘hand waived’, hmm, we’re still working on what that meant, but it doesn’t matter because it was tasty.
Feeling slightly more chipper on Sunday, I agreed to go for a long cycle ride with Rodney. It doesn’t look like we went far on the map, but it felt like it, especially with the wind against us on the way back. We followed the cycle path out to the coast to gaze on the Mediterranean and then continued on up the sand spit that separates the lagoon of the Mar Menor from the sea. The spit is covered in apartment complexes for as far as the eye can see, well the lagoon is the largest in Spain at about 22 kms long. It’s also incredibly shallow and it looks quite strange seeing people walk a long way in and still only be standing in water up to their waist. We sat for a while on the shores of the lagoon and watched kite surfers speeding past in a ‘Red Bull’ competition. The judges were sat out on a platform about 100 metres offshore and, on reflection, they probably walked out there! By now it was nearing 2pm, obligatory lunch time in Spain, so we stopped to eat lunch at Los Caballos Braseria and then cycled back with an essential ice cream stop en route.
