We headed out of the Valencia Camper Park fully committed to our plan to 'stay put until the weather improved in Andalucia'. All we needed to do was drive around the motorway to the south of the city and install ourselves in one of the beachside campsites near Saler, a journey of less than 40kms. Somewhere along the way we changed our minds and I can't exactly work out why.
It's a very lived-in landscape beyond Valencia city limits - sprawling commuter towns, mixed with a patchwork of industrial estates and intensive agriculture. Market gardens and big orange groves cover the coastal plains backed by a chain of pale grey mountains ringing the horizon. It's not unpleasant or ugly just very humanised and maybe what we wanted was to spend time somewhere emptier where nature rather than culture predominated.
So we headed south believing the forecasts - that the rain bearing fronts were going to dissipate before we reached our destination in Murcia province. We attempted to book onto the campsite at Isla Plana, it was full. The gulf of Mazarron is popular, but the eastern part next to Cabo Tiñoso used to be quieter. Not so now. We called into Mercadona in Mazarron because we know its car park is moho friendly. Over lunch, despite my assertion last year that we wouldn't return, we decided to head for the area autocaravanas at Puntas de Calnegre. 'It's bound to have space' we agreed. It did.
We first stayed here in November 2014. This is what I wrote about the Puntas de Calnegre back then:
As for the place itself, there is very little here, it exudes the beauty of the overlooked, the half forgotten, the dilapidated. - an empty sea of the deepest blue next to an empty road; grey misty mountains beyond a beige stony desert. But colourful too - bougainvillea draped the gables of the village houses, some painted brightly, some gleaming white, others crumbling, their painted facades faded and peeling. I could understand how some people might find it desolate and melancholy, to us it seemed peaceful and sublime.
In just a decade, year by year, the place has developed. The old fishing village hasn't changed that much, maybe some of the single storey Greek looking cottages have been re-whitewashed. However, the landscape itself has been transformed. Plasticulture covers the stoney garrigue.
Two enormous 'area autocaravanas' stretch along the coast road, each, when completed, will accommodate over a hundred vans. Both are simple gravel car parks with electric points and services. Because they are open plan and easy to manoeuvre around they attract the owners of moho behemoths - coach sized Concordes and Cathargos with rear garages big enough to transport an on-board Smart car. Predominantly they were German owned, a small, temporary colony of well-heeled retirees from the Bundersrepublik. It didn't feel welcoming.
We pressed on next day, first to a petrol station south of Aguillas to refill our dwindling supply of GPL, then onwards to the Cabo de Gata. Very few places on Spain's Mediterranean coast have protected status. The Cabo de Gata is the largest, a precarious island of wilderness marooned by the Mediterranean on one side and a man-made sea of plasticulture on the other.
These days it's very difficult, even in winter months, to get 'far from the madding crowd' anywhere on Spain's Mediterranean coast. However the Cabo de Gata is the exception, it feels empty and remote. The area is sparsely populated, 460sq kilometres of volcanic mountains next to the sea with only one settlement - San José - that looks big enough to count as a town. Then you look up the place's population and discover it's only 894, so it's a village really. The other settlements - Las Isleta, Agua Amarga, Las Negras, are even smaller. There are few roads and in the winter months only three campsites are open. Wild camping is banned and in recent years the prohibition has been strictly enforced. Apart from three or four small areas autocaravanas that have sprung up since we first visited here a decade ago visitor numbers in the winter months remain low because development has been so strictly controlled.
I love the sense of seclusion you get, it's a rare thing these days especially near the sea. This is inevitable I suppose, we live on an ever more crowded planet. It took over a quarter of a million years for the human population to reach one billion, sometime in the early years of the nineteenth century. By the time I was born in 1955 that figure had tripled. Seventy years later there are five billion more humans using ever more resources, the last billion of us added in just thirteen years.
Given the scale of population growth then the fact that Spain's Costas are awash with motorhomes and campsites are fully booked by retirees from the north seeking some winter sun is hardly surprising. Nevertheless it does not stop us seeking roads less travelled and places where tourism is small scale and unobtrusive, even though year by year it gets ever more difficult to escape the creeping tide of mass tourism.
For the first time ever Los Escullos was fully booked when we phoned ahead. The alternative is a WeCamp site at Las Negras. The place really is in quite a remote spot down a single track road of hairpin bends with a sheer cliff on one side dropping straight into the sea, unprotected by a crash barrier. Even here was busy and booking it complicated by having to use a central call centre.
The operator's English was very limited, we hoped we had booked in for two nights but without a confirmation email we could not be sure. Moreover, though she had taken payment (well over the Acsi discount rate!), the amount did not appear on our account.
We arrived only slightly traumatised by the precipitous goat track, and once the receptionist had unscrambled the approximation of our surname on the booking system she managed to find a spot for three nights and charged us the Acsi discount rate.
"Why are we so crazy busy?" She mused. Adding, "It's the middle of winter!" True, but the waysides are covered in yellow sorrel, asphodels bloomed among the boulder strewn garrigue and the chill northerly breeze washed all moisture from the air turning the sea and sky to deepest azure. From a northerners point of view it's a very benign kind of winter.
So If you are seeking a small patch of paradise to dream about on cold drizzly days in northern England hereabouts fits the bill nicely.
The campsite itself is sequestered in a small valley running inland from Cala del Cuervo. The small cove has a rocky bluff to the west, then curves like a sickle eastwards; the rocks at the far end are marbled with reds and yellows stripes. The entire area was once volcanic.
The small village of Las Negras is in the next bay, less than a kilometre distant.
There are still a few small fishing boats drawn up on the beach put the place is now a small resort really, slightly scruffy with a laid back ageing hippy vibe. We love it
One restaurant was offering a two course lunch with wine for €15, including a fish course - remarkable! A bit too much though for us at lunchtime so we found a café that served delicious tostas and Breton style crepes.
The village takes it's name from the sinister dark headland to east. Even under a deep blue sky and sea, Las Negras, shaped like a giant's clenched fist, looks a tad unsettling.
The coastline of the Cabo de Gata reminds me of the far south of the Peloponnese or Southern Crete. Will I manage to realise my dream of driving the moho back to the Mani, or even the more radical idea of taking the ferry from Piraeus to Chania and exploring Crete? It's now over two decades since we were there, a return visit is overdue. Time ticks by. During our first big European trips in 2014 -15 we celebrated our sixtieth birthdays, a travelling life stretched out before us as an alluring prospect. Ten years on and the sense that we will not always be able to do this nags at the back of my mind.
Next autumn we hope head to Sardinia. That's easily doable, but further afield - Puglia, Greece, Sicily - are more of a challenge. Our previous long trips all occurred before the Schengen rules applied and we were able to split the journey by placing the van in secure storage then flying home for a month or two. It enabled us to travel long distances at a leisurely pace. Since the 90/180 rule has applied we have juggled the dates so we do two 60 - 70 day trips, one in the early months of the year then a second in September/October. Then with carefully planning wr can squeeze in a third, thirtyish day European trip in May/June. So this year, for example, we are in Spain from mid January to mid March then heading to Sardinia in late September until mid November. Then with luck we might be able to re-visit Denmark for a month or so in late Spring.
All of this needs to be fitted around routine medical check-ups and family events. Three significant ones - in late March Sarah and Rob's first child is due to arrive - our first grandchild; then in August Matthew and Kristina's baby is due. Laura and Brian have decided to get married in Tokyo, it makes sense practically as well as romantically as it will simplify their visa situation.
Looking further ahead, if we do want to take some longer trips to Sicily and Greece then we may need to change the way we travel, reducing our habit of visiting Europe three times a year to just two, but making both of them 90 days to maximise our Schengen visa allowance. We have to be home over Christmas. So one possible pattern might be a longer stay in Iberia in the first half of the year, say from late February to late May, followed by a three month trip in the autumn from late August to late November. This would give us time to explore further afield in Sicily and Greece.
The downside to this travel pattern would mean we would be stuck 1000' up in the Pennines during the coldest months of the year. Perhaps we could soften the blow by seeking a couple of weeks of winter sun somewhere outside of the Scenghen zone, perhaps in the Cape Verde Is. or the Caribbean. That would come at a cost however, both financial and environmental.
Other factors also impact on our travel plans. Laura is likely to be in Japan at least until the end of Brian's contract - the computer game he is working on is due to be launched in eighteen months time. After then I can't see them returning to the UK, Brian is Canadian, it's more likely that his future work will be based in North America. It looks as if we are going have to become more frequent flyers in the future!
So a lot think about and exciting, positive things to look forward to. It's good, as you get older 'same old' is really bad for you. Nostalgia is toxic, 'the good old days' one of the most debilitating myths we have. Cue Roisin - the time is now!
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