Albir to Santa Pola
We finally got away from the campsite at about 11
am so that wasn’t too bad. We had to
refuel, do some shopping and drive about 1 hour 15 to Santa Pola where we had
arranged to meet Ramin and Christine at around 2pm.
Mmmmm – apart from moving the van from the pitch to
the dump (motorhome service point to be pc) and a few times of hiring a car, I
hadn’t driven in 4 months. This was to
say the least very strange. So it was
time to get used to handling a behemoth of a motorhome again. I very tentatively drove out of the campsite,
taking care not to take any bollards with me and turned right into the very
narrow road at the entrance – I have to admit that I did have to wiggle a bit and
I might have gone up on the kerb to get round.
Then it was off into the wild world of the Spanish drivers. We were
heading to Benidorm, 1 to get fuel and 2 to get supplies. We didn’t know what the campsite would be
like or how far it would be from civilisation so we decided to get food for
about 3 days at least – and to stock up on the essentials of beer etc etc.
I had forgotten just how long it takes to fill with
LPG, you have to stand there for ages and ages and ages holding the button down
so that the fill happens. However we were not going any further until we had
filled up our habitation tank so it just had to happen. We have three tanks to fill, LPG for
habitation and engine and we also needed to top up with Petrol. We like to keep
about half a tank just in case we run out of LPG.
But the good news was that our habitation tank took
approximately 15 euros to fill – which meant that our habitation gas (cooking,
heating etc) had only cost us 15 euros for the whole 4 months of the winter.
Beat that mortar homers!!!!!! Mind you
we did eat out A LOT!
So having left the fuel station we then headed for
Carrefour at Finistrat (just outside Benidorm).
Now this is not my favourite supermarket but it is a huge one and that
usually means plenty of parking. To park
properly, our van needs 4 car parking spaces – two in length and over one in
width. I did once get into the narrow
bit in Tesco in Rugby and had to do a bit of jiggery pokery to get out. Fantastic, plenty of parking. The day was
going well so far.
Shopping is boring but just one comment, Amstel
lager was on special offer of buy two get one free. I did point out to Mr Right
that I thought that was buy two cans get one free but just to be sure he put 3
CASES onto the trolley. We then
considered topping up our mobile phone as we only had about a euro left, but it
was the first time that we had topped it up since getting it in January and of
course we hadn’t got a clue how to. But
time was getting on and we needed to be on the road to meet our friends at 2.
Now this is a tip for anyone travelling – if you
are in a place and know it well and you need to do something, do it there, not
when you get somewhere unknown. We have
always gone on our own advice, if you need a supermarket and see one, stop, you
don’t know where the next one will be. Should have topped up the phone!!!!!
We needed to ring the bank. In their infinite wisdom they had cancelled
Iain’s debit card and issued a new one and we needed to ring and find out
more. Of course as the card wasn’t
working this meant that we couldn’t get onto the internet banking so we
couldn’t find out if there had been any problems on the account.
Anyway off we set for Santa Pola, however as most
husband and wife teams know, driving and navigating can be a bit
problematic. It was only about 200 yards
before the first row, well it was more of a shout followed by silence. I seem
to have this problem telling my left from my right. I am driving a left-hand drive vehicle when
for the last 30 odd years I have driven a right-hand drive and I’m driving on
the right-hand side of the road when ditto on the left. Whilst I have no
problem being on the “other” side of the road, or the other side of the
vehicle, it totally confuses me when it comes to an instruction of turn left or
right. Also this was not helped by the
fact that I had it in my head that Valencia was a good signpost to follow and
not Alicante.
So having gone north instead of south on the dual
carriageway, Iain politely mentioned that as we were around Benidorm it wasn’t
far to the next junction where we could turn around. So we came off the next
junction which meant that we had to go right at the top, over the bridge, to
the next roundabout and TURN LEFT. Not quite, because turning left actually
means turning right at the correct exit from the roundabout. Well I missed the
turning (signposted Alicante) because actually there were two different exists
signposted Alicante and I was trying really hard NOT to follow the signposts to
Alicante on the toll road. Oh so we were on our way to Valencia AGAIN. At this
rate we’d be home before we got to Santa Pola.
Well the language and volume were incredible I
think it went something like “What bit of LEFT don’t you understand!!!!” Well
it must have been bad because Mr Right hardly ever loses his temper but he does
insist that he didn’t swear at me. So again (in stony silence) we crossed the
bridge and round the roundabout, then back across the bridge to the same
roundabout again and this time successfully managed to take the correct exit
towards Alicante. Phew – we were finally
on our way, 3 hours since we’d left the pitch and we’d only gone 5 miles.
There wasn’t much talking for the first few miles I
must say. The non-toll roads in Spain to
my mind are much easier than the non-toll roads in France. Here at least the main roads are quite wide
and the N332 goes through towns but generally stays a good size. Unlike the French roads that when they go
through towns tend to get very narrow and there is a lot of stop-starting which
is not an economical way to drive our truck. There can be quite a lot of
traffic lights and roundabouts in the towns but generally they are ok.
Luckily, once I was heading in the right direction
and tempers had cooled there wasn’t much else to mention about the journey.
So onward quizteam soldiers to Santa Pola.
Another thing we do when we have to be somewhere is
to find it first, then find somewhere to park. Otherwise if you park up you can
find that you are still miles from your destination. I think one good thing about arriving
anywhere by boat is that you will nearly always be near the centre of the town,
whether it’s a canal in England or a marina in Spain. So we headed for the marina to find Ramin and
Chris. Wow and it was five minutes to
two so we had made brilliant time. We
pulled up as close as possible to the marina to let them know we were here and
that we’d park up and come back. Of
course my 8.3 m motorhome ended up down a no exit, except with a turning circle
where there was a height restriction of 2m. Ramin found us so we arranged to
park and then come back for lunch.
So with an audience I had to swing the motorhome
round and go back in the direction from which I came. Not a mean feat in a tight space. We drove
around a bit trying to find somewhere to park and ended up by the football
stadium. This appeared to be an ok place
to stay overnight but I must admit that the outlook was pretty boring.
We walked back to the marina and boarded Shiraz for
a drink. We headed off for some tapas lunch and had a good old catch up with
Ramin and Chris. It’s amazing how
similar and yet how different things are when living on a boat or a
motorhome. It was great swapping stories
of some of the triumphs and disasters that happen when travelling around on
both. All those things that terrify you at the time and then you laugh at the
afterwards.
After lunch we went back to the motorhome and having
seen some motorhomes parked up, we then drove to the sea-front to find
somewhere to wild-camp for the night. Now I’m quite happy to wild-camp, and
technically we can park a motorhome on any road, but parking does not
necessarily mean sleeping. Although this was to be our first night wild-camping
in Spain, I didn’t feel nervous, but the down-side is that you can’t spread out
and get your chairs out. Thankfully the
council had decided to put a bench just outside where we had parked so at least
we could get outside for a while.
Later on I walked the dog along the sea front and I
thought Santa Pola was quite a nice place to be except that again like Oliva it
was like a ghost town. I know it is
still out of season for Spain but there are so many apartments and no one living
in them. Although Santa Pola wasn’t on
our list of places to visit, I would not cross it off as somewhere I didn’t
want to go back to.
 |
| Looking towards the marina |
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| Miles of sandy beaches |
Having had a good night’s sleep, we took the dog
for a long walk along the seafront in the morning and then parked her back at
the motorhome and walked to the marina for a coffee with Ramin and Chris before
leaving for La Manga. It was lovely to
catch up, our paths simply crossed and we hadn’t seen them for about 9
years. They were on their way north and
then across to the Baleriacs. They had
taken 3 years to get to Santa Pola and I wonder how long it will be before our
paths cross again.
We left Santa Pola for about a two hour drive to La
Manga and the biggest campsite I've ever seen.
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