Week 8 – 27th January 2024 – 1st February 2024 – Mar Menor to Peniscola (250 miles)
Saturday 27th January 2024 – Mar Menor / Berlin Day 4
It’s still good weather in Spain but a bit breezier. The runway resurfacing trucks were still going at midnight last night with their endless beeping, so there’s still no chance of any fighter jet activity. It’s a quiet day with a cycle along the Mar Menor and a quick tapa in a beachside cafe.
In Berlin it’s show day today. Del is up at 6 am for a 7 am call, rehearsals and run-through. The event starts at 1 pm so plenty of time still.
A busy morning but we’re ready on time. By 6 pm it’s all over for the daytime crew, who hand over to the night-time crew for the evening bit which ends at 1 am.
All in all a good day, a good couple of days. Again it’s nice to see so many familiar faces. Good people. Very pleasant. The only downside is the terrible hotel bed! It is shocking!
“Home” tomorrow. Hayley and Jess will pick up Del at Alicante airport at 1:30 pm.
Sunday 28th January 2024 – Mar Menor / Berlin Day 5
In Spain the weather has turned it’s like it knows that Del is coming back, it has been raining and it’s still grey and a bit cool. H tracks Del’s flight and sets off with Jess to Alicante to pick him up.
In Berlin Del is up at 6 am again today for a 9:30 flight. The airport is about half an hour away, but the airlines do like you to be there bright and early.
A fast drive to the airport by the mad Uber driver, but we get there in one piece with plenty of time to spare only to find there is a delay to the flight. Great. It was going so well. A pretzel and coffee breakfast. Love pretzels!
We finally take off at 11:00 am, an hour and a half late. A pleasant, uneventful flight back to Alicante, a short walk to our agreed meeting point and within 3 minutes Hayley is coming around the corner grinning with a grinning Jess. A very nice welcome back.
The drive to the campsite in Mar Menor is about an hour. Hayley has done a great job of keeping everything in order and doing the two-hour round trip to pick up Del. Great. She has booked us in for a late lunch, early dinner at the local restaurant, Kinita, located right on the beachfront. We are going to have their tasting menu.
We arrive back at the campsite with less than an hour before our booking thanks to the delays Del has had. The weather has cooled off a bit so we are shown to a table for two inside.
It’s quite a feed – 2 small taster plates, 2 starters, 2 mains & 2 desserts… Each!!! The servings are small, but by the time we get to the dessert we have had enough food. It doesn’t stop Del from finishing off Hayley’s dessert though.
Back at Jess a quite peaceful evening. Tomorrow we move on.
Monday 29th January 2024 – Mar Menor to Benidorm (92 miles)
Today we are going to Benidorm! Yes that’s right, Benidorm. Well, why not? Hayley has found a campsite, which has a good walk into the “main bit”. We are looking at doing two nights there.
The drive is nice and easy, sea on our right, as we make our way north.
The site is huge, having 750 pitches, busy and in parts a little close-quartered. Hayley’s at the wheel and she gets us nicely tucked into a good space. Once settled in we take the walk into town, which is a good 30 minutes. It’s a warm sunny day, so it’s quite pleasant.
We have good look around Benidorm. It’s busy, but not mad busy as it’s winter and most of the people are of a certain age, of which we are one of we suppose.
The peak of summer will probably be a different story entirely, as you can probably imagine! We walk down the main pub, bar and club bit called Calle Gerona and the down to the esplanade where we have a very tasty and cheap chicken and chips, salad and a drink for 10 euros each. Excellent.
A bit more walking in the sunshine to a small hotel with a terrace, sitting in the afternoon sun with a cocktail.
Well, it is January. We have concluded that Benidorm is not all that bad. You do hear some stories, and you’ve probably seen the TV program by the same name, but we find it to be ok with a lovely sandy beach and some nice-looking restaurants on the front (also some dubious-looking ones with rowdy, drunk, holidaymakers in!) It has something for everyone. It’s clean and cheap, with a fantastic long sandy beach. What more do you want…?
We do the long slog back to the site and spend some time with Jess. We can’t help our selves, we have to go to the local bar that has a chap on singing, (well we say singing) and have some tapas and a glass of red. A nice way to end the day.
Tuesday 30th January 2024 – Benidorm Day 2
Our second and last day in Benidorm has been quite relaxed starting with a bacon and avocado sandwich and coffee. After breakfast is cleared up Hayley gets her maps out and burns the internet out charting and planning our route back home. We think that this will be our last week in Spain.
Del is on the other side of the table doing some homework for work he has once he’s home. A productive morning.
We are keeping our eye on the situation in France. French farmers are blocking all the roads into Paris in protest of EU environmental red tape and the withdrawal of fuel subsidies. It’s getting tetchy up there. Looking at Google Maps there are really bad delays on the main roads going in and out of Paris. We are not going near Paris, however, we will be on some of the roads, some of the ways that are blocked and will get worse if there is no settlement. We do need to keep an eye on it over the next few days. Next week we will be in France so we have to be ready with an alternative route, if available.
Jess cleaning day today, so all the windows get opened up, surfaces cleaned down and everything freshened up. A weekly routine. Tonight we are having a night out in Benidorm, dinner and a “show”. Hmmm. We shall see…
There is a bountiful supply of Indian restaurants here in Benidorm so we will hunt one down then go out into the town and catch a “Show“. Hayley has done some local research and found us a well-rated Nepalese/Indian restaurant. A 20-minute walk towards the town and we are having an excellent Indian dinner, fabulous though.
Excellent service and price, but the food was outstanding. Time for a walk into the town and to see how it’s looking. Well… not so exciting. Out of season, it’s largely quiet, with a few places doing the odd karaoke, and we mean odd. There’s a Billy Joel tribute on at 9 pm in Neptune’s bar – this is the bar featured in the TV series Benidorm – we will have to come back to that. Meanwhile,
Del manages to squeeze in a bit of shopping in a hardware store which is bizarrely positioned right in the middle of the nightlight strip, bet that’s chaos in summer.
To kill time we take a walk along the front. The beach has recently been swept and raked, it does look rather neat and tidy.
Our estimation of Benidorm has gone up these couple of days. If you want the drink, noise and dancing, then you can as it’s mostly set back from the front which is very tidy with a great collection of restaurants and neat hotels. Not bad really. Not bad at all.
It’s 9 pm and time to go and see Billy Joel, Live in Calle Gerona! He wasn’t too bad as it goes. Looked and sounded nothing like him, but he could sing and did and good 45 minutes.
After the break, it was a Liam Gallagher lookie-soundie-likey. We watched the first song and left!!!
Not the rip-it-up atmosphere that we hoped to witness but being January we suppose that it’s as good as we are going to get. We take the 30-minute walk back to the campsite and get settled in for the night.
Wednesday 31st January 2024 – Benidorm to Benicarlo (185 miles)
It’s a grey morning this morning in Benidorm. Today we are moving on, continuing our way north. It’s a 3-hour drive today to Benicarlo. We stopped here on the way down on this trip. We won the bingo twice that night. During the last hour of the drive, the clouds clear and we have a lovely blue sky and 16 degrees.
We are given a nice spacious plot and quickly get settled in. Benicarlo Marina is just south of us so we set off on the half-hour walk towards it.
It’s a lovely day. We sit at a bar in the marina admiring the boats and reminiscing about the time we had ours. We never stopped here when we had our boat, but we did pass Benicarlo several times.
On the way back to the van we find that someone has converted a bottle bank into a “cat home“. It’s a local scheme to control feral cats.
They find them, doctor them and then let them free again and this converted bottle bank is a place that the cats hang out in. A good idea we thought.
Dinner tonight is on Jess, and a fine dinner it is.
Movie night tonight. Shirley Valentine. A great film about a lady who goes to Greece and finds herself.
Thursday 1st February 2024 – Benicarlo to Peniscola (8 miles!)
A bright cool sunny morning this morning. A long leisurely breakfast this morning. We are only going 8 miles along the road to the town of Benicarlo itself to check out the castle there that sits on the coast. No rush this morning.
Breakfast is done, van service is done and we are on our way for the 15-minute drive to a very nice campsite in the town of Peniscola. We are given a very nice pitch. It’s a lovely warm morning so the chairs are out already and we are enjoying some sunshine. Del sets off for a walk to see what the town is like. It’s a very pleasant, clean and well-maintained place.
The summers here must be packed, the shoreline, which goes for miles is lined with hotels. The beach is beautiful with the castle at the south of the town on a tiny headland. All very pleasant. Should be a nice day.
Del arrives back at the van just as Hayley is taking a call from the UK informing her that her mum has been taken ill.
We will now be cutting the trip short and arranging for a speedy return to the UK so we will sign off on the blog for this time.
So sorry to hear that Hayley’s mum has been taken ill. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading of your adventures so thank you, and have a safe, and hopefully speedy, trip back home.
Thank you for the blogs – we have enjoyed following your adventures. Have a safe journey home – Our thoughts are with you and of course Haley’s mum.
Take care – Love Sandra & Jim P xx