The Guns of Mazarron... and earning a crust at bingo!
Monday, November 12
Camper Park La Ribera, San Javier, Murcia Phew, that was a relief! With nary a backward glance, we left Benidorm as early as we could to ensure we got on the road early, ready for a long (for us) 90-mile drive south to an aire very close to the soon-to-be-closing airport at San Javier, Murcia. There were two reasons for this stopover: we needed a break on the way to our winter home at Mazarron and, more importantly, we wanted to see what the aire was like. On January 1 we’re flying out of Murcia to get back home for a wedding and the plan was always to bring the van to the aire, leave it secured for a week while we’re in the UK and then pick it up again when we fly back. As it turned out, this place is a lovely spot, not just for a stopover but, as became clear from all the vans here, for an extended stay. It’s basic but the showers are clean and there’s a smart bar and restaurant on site. Plus, it is right on the shore of the Mar Menor, the beautiful and placid saltwater lake fringed by a number of lovely resorts, including La Manga. Less attractively, it’s also virtually adjacent to the San Javier airport runway but that makes it very handy for anyone flying in or out; and the storage costs for the van are just €1.50 a day, down from the €11 it costs to stay at the aire. We arrived at the aire mid-morning, just as the military training flights were buzzing around practising their take-offs and landings before the commercial flights start the evening shift at about 6pm. If you can put up with that, this aire is a lovely place to be, and even better if you’re a plane-spotter. Bear in mind, though, that the commercial side of the airport is moving to a new purpose-built airport a little further south in mid-January, leaving just the military operations and a planned air museum to pick up the slack. Our early arrival meant we could enjoy a lovely walk in the warm sunshine around the shore to Los Alcazares and back through the town and its commercial parks where we looked out for somewhere to spend New Year’s Eve. In truth, apart from an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, there wasn’t a lot of choice. Still, there’s always beer, crisps and Jools Holland back in the van! Tuesday, November 13 Camping Playa de Mazarron, Bolnuevo Day one in our winter barracks. We’d agreed to have a close look at three different campsites in this region, the Costa Calida, Spain’s ‘hot coast’. We had a couple of stays here last December on our way back down to Marbella for Christmas and then in January on our long drive back up to Santander, staying at Los Madriles near Isla Plana. Its lovely pool, the boules three times a week and the lovely social scene were all draws but the grumpy boss and the less than perfect showers meant we had decided to give another couple of sites a try before we committed. The first was this beach-side site south of Mazarron in a village famous for its ‘erosions’, sandstone cliffs sculptured into strange shapes by the elements. It’s also very popular with British travellers and we met a fair few in the week we spent here. The site is right in the centre of the village and there’s a lot going on at this time of year. When we arrived the community was preparing for the sardine festival and the ‘Return of the Virgin’ procession over a bank holiday weekend. The procession celebrates the events around the Moorish occupation of the town in the 16th century. When the villagers heard about the arrival of the invading Africans they smuggled out their statue of the Madonna so they wouldn’t be thought of as Christians. Years later, when the Moors were driven back into the sea, the villagers brought the statue out of hiding and resumed their worship. Now, every year, the locals recreate the return with a procession from Mazarron to Bolnuevo that ends with the statue visiting every house that has suffered a death in the previous year... and lots of partying on the beach. On the Sunday, we stood on the main street for a half-hour waiting for the procession to start. It was worth the wait: half of Mazarron seemed to have turned out in their finery to take part in the parade. Most spectacular were the riding clubs who brought their horses along for the event. While the weather had been indifferent before the parade, the sun came out for its duration and no sooner had it finished than the clouds returned and a storm gathered, which was unleashed during the night in all its electric, rainy, windy glory. At least it meant the noisy fair that had kept us awake the night before was silenced prematurely. In between all this excitement, we did our best to mix in with the crowd who live here semi-permanently. Two people we came to know turned out to hail from Derby – Jeff and his wife Marilyn. We first met them in one of the backline bars in Bolnuevo; Jeff filled us in on his life since he’d left Derby in the late ‘60s and set up home in Cornwall. As he spoke, his wife insisted that we went to stay in their empty property. It was a very kind offer that she repeated during the afternoon... the only problem was that she answered all my questions and other efforts at conversation with this repeated insistence that we stay in her lovely home. Eventually, it dawned on us that she was suffering from dementia. Jeff is her carer, of course, and treats her with endless love and patience, as do their friends. Later, though, I found the whole episode a little upsetting (it was our first encounter with this cruel condition), as if it was a glimpse of our future. If it is, I hope we can deal with it as bravely as Jeff does, and that whoever suffers is as blissfully unaware of their state as Marilyn. Over the course of a week, we explored as much of this end of the Bay as we could on our bikes, cycling into Puerto de Mazarron and shopping and sightseeing. Even though the weather wasn’t brilliant, the locale was fine and Jane would have happily spent another week at Bolnuevo. There’s a lively scene at the site, with dances etc. and we took advantage of the long-termers’ habit of selling off their unwanted equipment by buying a nearly-new awning from a nice German couple. After he’d helped us fit it to our van, enabling us to see the few little tears in the fabric, we knocked him down from the €80 he wanted for it to €50 – a bargain! We decided to adopt a ‘price per night’ approach to it and if it lasts us until the end of February then it owes us nothing. At least it’s given us a shelter from the colder nights and increased our all-important living space. Nevertheless, we had promised ourselves to give each of our winter options a week, so... Monday, November 19 Camping Las Torres, Mazarron ... we moved to option number two. We knew this hillside site only from a couple of visits last year when we came to play tennis on their lovely court and to clean up at one of its monthly quiz and Play Your Cards Right nights. It seemed nice enough but our friends at Los Madriles tended to talk it down because of its tolerance of dogs. Well, we can only speak as we find and after one night here we felt it was a keeper! Compared to Los Madriles, everything is just a little bit homelier. It’s a good hike to the beach, there’s no pool fed by an underground thermal spring and the bar could be a bit smarter. But it is full of lovely people, many of whom we had the good fortune to be pitched among from day one. We were allocated a spot that was free until a little later in the month but as we were only planning to be here a week we took it. As we were setting up, one of the British guys on the row behind us suggested we turn the van around to protect us against the prevailing winds. This we did. Then, the following day, as we warmed to the place, we moved altogether, next to our helpful neighbour and a pitch in Sector A we could have until we fly back to the UK on New Year’s Day. Nicely settled, we got our new awning out, put ourselves about in the bar and booked ourselves in for the Thursday quiz, bolting ourselves on to Team Dan (new neighbour) and his friends Gordon and Sue, next but one to us on the other side. Are you keeping up? By the time the quiz was over, we’d made four new friends and decided that Las Torres had everything we wanted in a winter home. There was no need to have a week back at Los Madriles – our minds were made up. The next day, another of the gang we’d met at the quiz, Doug, turned up at our pitch, unbidden, and asked if we wanted British TV. “A group of us have bought a satellite dish and we wondered if you wanted hooking up to it,” he said. It wouldn’t cost us anything, he had all the cables and it wouldn’t take very long. Within half an hour we had the full Freesat package and were planning our viewing for the evening... Tipping Point here we come; thanks Doug! One of the many other benefits of being here is that Puerto de Mazarron is much easier to reach on bike than Los Madriles. It’s downhill virtually all the way and we can be at the Port or at the shopping complex within about 10 or 15 minutes. As a result, we’ve been using our bikes a little more to get out and about, cycling to some of the restaurants on the front and enjoying their terrific menu del dia choices. As humble newcomers, we’ve also been adopted by the lovely Gordon and Sue, a retired couple of antique dealers from Yorkshire who have taken us out in their car and shown us some of the incredible sights around the area, not least the Wednesday market in Totana, the headland and viewing point at Aledo and the hotel at the Santuario de Santa Eulalia. On the Sunday after our arrival (25th), they took us to the huge weekly market in Puerto de Mazarron where we enjoyed coffee and churros and I picked up a bargain Bluetooth speaker for €10, while Jane grabbed a watch for €5. Saturday, December 1 Bolnuevo Cars, Bolnuevo At last – some proper transport! We had arranged with BCars to hire one of their Ford KAs while we were in Bolnuevo a few weeks ago and on Saturday we took delivery of it. The idea is that if we have a car for a month we can really make the most of being settled and also use it to get to Marbella on Christmas Eve when we’re joining our great friend Sarah for a couple of days. Then we have time to get back to Las Torres and return it on the 28th before we strike camp and return to the U.K. for a week. To have a set of wheels felt great and we wasted no time in exploring the amazing, rugged countryside around Mazarron. On the Sunday, we had our first proper trip, to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate Gordon and Sue’s Ruby wedding anniversary, along with their friends Phil and Carol, two other Las Torres regulars. It was a lovely evening. The next day, I joined an ex-pats’ tennis club at the municipal courts in Puerto de Mazarron. For two hours, on Mondays and Thursdays, between 12 and 16 ‘mature’ people play competitive social tennis. The organiser, Malcolm from Newport, threw me in with three Germans, Udo, Hannes and Rudi, who proceeded to give me a chastening lesson in steady tennis. “Whatever you do,” said my partner, Udo, “don’t hit it to Rudi.” Of course, for the next two hours that’s exactly what I did, serving up a succession of easy volleys to this tall, 72-year-old German with a slight limp and a bad back. Only later did someone tell me he is the former German number 8! In between all this excitement, we have endured another problem with the van – a leaking water heater. We discovered it one morning when our water supply went from 100% to zero overnight. We’d known we had a problem because the pump kept repressurising the system virtually every five minutes. To fix it, we drained the system, tightened up the screws on the pump (as per our guide) and, for a while, it seemed the problem was fixed. Then, when we woke up in the morning the pump was desperately trying to fill the hot water boiler but couldn’t because all the water had leaked out of the system and out of the van. Calamity! We opened up the compartment under the sink and realised the problem wasn’t with the pump but a leaking valve into the heater. This was beyond us, so we called a caravan repair shop in Isla Plana who sent a nice, elderly Italian man out. He was unable to fix it but ordered a part and said he’d be back in four or five days to fit it. On Thursday, December 6, ‘Super Mario’ came back to put everything right, returning hot and cold running water to the van, just in time for me to get off to the more important matter of my Thursday tennis session. Later, we took a drive to see one of the great sights of the Costa Calida – the Guns of Mazarron, a battery of two 26-inch monsters designed to protect the port of Cartagena (from where the Armada sailed, apparently) about 20 miles north of where we are. The emplacement has long been redundant but once housed around 1,000 gunners and support staff, although the guns were never fired in anger, Spain never having fought a war in years, unless it was among themselves. Nevertheless, the site is quite amazing, the barracks and other buildings are being renovated while the guns themselves look like they were installed yesterday. Friday, December 7 Camping Las Torres It’s bingo night! We persuade Gordon and Sue to join us and about 40 or so German and Spanish folk for the weekly bingo session, although this is a Christmas special, with a bumper hamper as the main prize. It’s a busy night and, as a consequence, a late start but things go well and, while we miss the first and second lines, Jane wins the first full house, earning a decent ‘breakfast’ hamper of jams, bread, butter and a nice bread bin and a bread knife for her efforts. Then, Sue wins the second house, picking up an identical hamper to her obvious delight and the slightly muted applause from the other players who see our table picking up all the goodies. For the third house of the night, I get down to two numbers: 40 and eight, both of which come out in quick succession. “Bingo!” I call out, trying to inject a bit of shame into my voice. Sheepishly, I add the breakfast hamper to the other two we’d won and secretly make plans to buy a Euromillions lottery ticket at the weekend! Luckily! we don’t win either the fourth hamper or the Christmas special and, with our bread knives to protect us, we manage to get back to our vans in one piece. Another good night. The next day, we head out for a drive to Camposol, a huge British-dominated urbanisation a few miles inland from Mazarron. We go principally to pick up some Christmas lights for the awning but also to have a look at a place dubbed ‘Camp Asshole’ by some folk. It turns out to be a fairly standard collection of villas and a number of British shops and bars gathered around a large Consum supermarket and an even larger Chinese bazaar where we buy the lights. Most striking about the place is the high walls around the villas and the heavy iron security bars on all the windows. All told, we’d rather be in our humble little campsite up in the hills. Monday, December 10 Camping Las Torres With the weather holding firm (low 20s and gloriously sunny) and nice friends either side of us, we’re sitting pretty here. As a bonus, Gordon has kindly offered to drive us to the airport on January 1 and pick us up when we fly back. We’ve also decided that when we do come back, we will stay at Las Torres, although not on the lovely, large and sunny pitch we’re on at the moment; someone has booked it from the start of January. As a result, we’ve secured a smaller but acceptable pitch in a different part of the site. Hopefully, our new friends won’t abandon us when we’ve moved to ‘Sector B’! |
Pictured, from top: one of the mighty guns of Mazarron; one of the stalls at the fair in Bolnuevo; some of the riders in the procession; the Virgin Mary on her way back into the village; Jane, Gordon and Sue on our day out at Totana; some views of the gun battery north of Mazarron; the altar of the church in Mazarron town; Jane has her December dip in the sea off Bolnuevo; the bingo four with their spoils
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