La Manga

We got back to the hotel at around 7.15am... we managed to get a few hours sleep before we had to check out. I woke sarah at about 11.15 because I was pretty hungry (we hadn’t eaten anything but a pretty horrible bocadillo at 3pm the previous day). I was not surprised to find that it took another 45mins to leave the room. Even though we had only been in it for around 11 hours Sare had managed to spread her stuff into every drawer, cupboard and surface and now had to re-pack. I was dressed and packed in about mins. The years of training for getting the train were dying hard.
We left the hotel and found a really nice little restaurant on the edge of a square to have some food. We ate and watched the world go by for an hour in the shade and then made a move for the ferry. Hopes of some new super ferry were dashed as the good old “Carmen del Mar” was in the dock. We boarded and went to sleep in the lounge. I woke up and decided to get some sun.. We went out on deck and it was very warm and nice. There did seem to be a lot of banging around and it turned out some guys were repairing the life boats. Thankfully not adding more duct tape to hold them together.

When we reached the camp site in Javea I tried and failed (again) to get wifi from the reception guy. I resolved that people just don’t want me to have internet. We sunned ourselves for a day and missed out on the lovely pool as it closed when we walked towards it for a swim.
The next day it was time to move. We had decided to make our way down to Santa Pola – south of Alicante. After a few interesting sat nav directions we made it onto the correct route. The trip down was uneventful and the scenery was not great. There doesn’t seem to be a square inch the Spanish aren’t building on. On arrival at Santa Pola we had wind but also “No kite surfing” signs, there seemed to be some kites further down the beach so we made our way down in the van trying to get some wifi. We found a hotspot, so an hour later when I emerged from the van the wind had died to below the required level. The area wasn’t that nice so we decided to head down to Mar Menor near Murcia.

Our first stop was Lo Pagan at the northern end of Mar Menor. The spot book had a photo of an unspoiled spit of sand with no buildings and campers parked down the road. We think the reality was very different. I say we think because I can’t quite believe it’s changed so much since the photo was taken. The whole area was built up and the entrance to the spit had bollards. Palm trees had also been placed all the way down a path on the spit making launching difficult. We moved on to La Manga.

The Spaniards had been busy, the skyline of La Manga is dominated by some surprisingly large buildings. The campsite we found was also huge, 1km from door to beach with masses of pitches and bungalows. I experienced some more camper envy here as there were some huge coach style motorhomes which even had supply tents. I decided we should cycle into the town to find a kite shop. This was around 6pm.. It turned out to be a bad idea, the address we had was old and there seemed to be nothing around. We went to the tourist info and it turned out to be 3km down the road. We decided to go to the supermarket and then head back. Sarah was becoming concerned about the busy roads and impending darkness, and therefore decided to cycle at less than 10mph... why go slower when you are worried about the dark? I don’t know.

The next morning there was a huge storm that lasted aound 4 hours. We were once again relieved to find that the van did not leak.