Thursday 29 January 2015

Another packed house for the campsite Spanish lessons

Friday 30 January

A windy day out in Elche took us to the palm gardens for a 2km walk among the 200,000 palms combined with a visit to the old town.

Palm tree promenade

Moorish remains

The Cathedral

Rambla Del Vinalopo

Wednesday 26 January

Bikes on a train again, this time in the opposite direction to Alicante.  Arguably one of the most beautiful palm fringed pedestrianised waterfronts in Spain. This is a relaxed gem of a Riviera city without the pretense of ones of greater fame

Alicante arrival

The waterfront

The architecture

Palm fringed prom' with marble tiles

Sandy city beach gym

brave souls swimming in January

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Sunday 25 January

Laundry day at the campsite, took advantage of the first warm day, got the laundry blues washing everything we own except our shoes.

Friday 23 January

Bikes on a train to Murcia city proved to be a neat way to get there. Murcia is not exactly on the tourist trail but was well worth the visit, the  local tapas lived up to its reputation of being inventive and top quality.

Murcia's Cathedral

The Casino without the gambling tables

Mrs Bo Bangles street seller                    

Lunch stop at Los Zagales

Just as popular as it ever was

Thursday 22 January

Marjal is a newly built campsite with exceptional facilities, it is a self contained village/town which is ideally set up for an extended winter stay, although isolated from any major cultural hot spots the facilities include a supermarket, cafe, restaurant, gym, tennis courts and indoor pool plus an events calendar for every day of the week. Today’s free twice weekly Spanish lesson proved to be extremely popular with more than 30 silver surfers wanting to learn Espanol, how cool is that.

Earlier in the week we ventured into the local hills courtesy of an organised event that we could not have attempted on our own, our bikes have also been put to work getting us around the site and out and about.

  A very blistering climb into the hills

Cycle selfie with solar farm background

Don’t be deceived by the blue skies as the jet stream has been following us south bringing with it bitterly cold north winds and chilling the temperatures, saying that, there are some deluded folks here on site topping up their tans sporting shorts and tee shirts. Believe it or not it is very, very cold.

2015

Monday 12 January

To avoid the early morning rush hour we wild camped the night away at Portsmouth ferry port in readiness for the next day's early morning departure of our Bilbao bound ferry 'Etretat'.

It is the season of the jet stream in conveyor belt mode, which means it fires back to back winter storms across the Atlantic to the UK shores. Wind speeds of 113 mph (that's hurricane force) recorded in Scotland earlier this week.

Tuesday 13 January

We departed Portsmouth under clearing skies after a night of gales and torrential rain.

It looks like the good weather is not going to last with line squalls on the horizon and increasing swell as we head West down the English Channel towards the Bay of Biscay. At around 4pm I glanced out of the cabin porthole to notice the Edison lighthouse dead ahead putting us just south of Falmouth in Cornwall and I wondered why on earth we were on such an unusual heading, hugging the south coast of England. My thoughts being we had either been captured by Cornish pirates or the captain is giving Ushant (the start of the Bay of Biscay) a very wide berth. Well it proved to be the later.

Just after dark we changed heading towards a more southerly track and all hell broke loose as the ships motion turned into a corkscrewing roller coaster ride complete with the following sound fx (storm music). The slamming and shuddering of the ship as it fell off waves, add to that everything creaking, rattling, shaking and crashing, when suddenly a tannoy announcement informed us that the mal meteo had created a 4hr delay in our ETA. That was like being told that you are going to have to stay on this fairground ride for an extra 4hrs just when you're feeling a little queasy and would love it to stop right now.

Wednesday 14 January

After that memorable night the sea state slowly improved the further south we travelled and happiness was restored seeing the coast of Spain looming over the horizon. We now know why the Pope kisses the ground when arriving on terra firma. We kissed the ground at Bilbao and headed south via the mountains giving us the perfect backdrop to a stunning sunset. Next stop Zaragoza for an overnight stop.

Thursday 15 January

Today's destination is Valencia, one of our favourite Spanish cities, another beautiful day’s drive through the mountains of Aragon to our campsite on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Friday 16 January

We rode the local bus into Valencia for a leisurely day of ambling around the city. First stop was the Cathedral to check out the chalice of the Holy Grail, Monty Python would be proud of us.

The Holy Grail

Next stop the IVAM Valencia’s Museum of Art Modern, amongst the exhibits were some of Robert Capa’s photographs from the Civil war.

The International Brigade 1936

A walk in the park took us past some strange boab type trees with trunks designed to impede climbing them.

Saturday 17 January

Time to move on, today's destination is Calpe with it’s giant molar like rock rearing out of the sea, straddled by two beautiful beaches, the northern one somewhat spoilt by high rise wall to wall development.

Calpe where we wild camped the night away along with the raggle taggle gypsies-O in their expensive motorhomes

Sunday 18 January

And now for something completely different, continuing south past Benidorm into Murcia we arrived at our campsite for the next couple of weeks called Marjal, allegedly the largest campsite in Europe. If viewed from a satellite high above the earth it would appear as quite a blight on the landscape similar to the polytunnels of Almeria. On the ground it is a different story and is more akin to the massive trailer parks of the USA and given the size of some of the RV’s on site you may be forgiven to be thinking that you have warped into the US of A.

Marjal campsite

Motorhome Art

Monster Motorhomes & Fifth wheelers

Monster pickup

I guess it’s official, we are now certified trailer trash.