Denia/Javea Casita via Mojacar

Decided to do another long stretch from Nerja to the house of long-standing university friends in the above area.

The landscape through Almeria, and into the Murcia regions is very arid and the word ‘brutalist’ sums it up for me. Lots of agriculture under plastic poly-tunnels. I do like a tree, or many, and there aren’t any unless veering off into the towns and cities.

As Mojacar was only 10km off the motorway at one point, I went there for a lunch stop and to have a think about Mum. This was one of her happy places which her partner had introduced into her life, and I had also joined them on two occasions in March with the last one in 2019. I wanted to see whether any half-built apartment blocks had been completed, and whether it was still as beautiful and welcoming in June. It was, and some of the buildings had been completed.

The motorway journey was great and only really got busy around Alicante. The landscape suddenly changed at Ca;lpe and became green with trees, and it felt as though I had driven all the way to the Cote d’Azur.

When I finally found my friends’ house in the La Sella area, I spent a geat 4 days with them, staying in their annex, enjoying the beautiful location and having them as tour guides around Denia, Javea and into the mountains for a paella. Hopefully I’ll have other times in the future to visit. They haven’t aged a day 🙂

Ultimately heading for the Costa Brava, I decided to stay at a small site at the medieval town of Bocairent, passing Ontinyent inland from Valencia. Very beautiful wide valleys here with vineyards, and surrounded by hills/low mountains. The Beach Boys accompanied some of the rising temperature to more than 30 degrees. Most unfortunately the little campsite of 6 pitches was fully booked, and so I drove on, stopping at a site at another medieval town, Xativa.

On final arrival I was shattered from some of the drive taking me through very narrow residential streets in towns along the way, and having to do more than one u-turn due to the lack of signs for the campsites. And how could I almost forget another of my most hated episodes: trying to navigate to a gas station which had LPG, and then trying to get some out of the pump and into the vehicle, in this case from what seemed to be a completely un-‘personned’ station.

After about 10 mins in the heat of the midday of repeatedly reading the destructions on the pump (another sign of madness) and trying to get the pump to clamp onto one of my 4 or so adaptors, there suddenly appeared a hero-type with his polo-shirt indicating he was a gas station attendant. Between his Spanish and my English, and my obvious welcome at his appearance, he conveyed that I needed to activate my card payment on another machine away from the LPG pump first (not in the instwuctions), He then proceeded to achieve the process with ease, and deal unflinchingly with the explosion on de-clamping the pump. My jubilance lasted all the way until the narrow residential street driving.

After the arrival cup of tea and period of collapse, I forced myself off to walk round the town for a couple of hours, and it was well worth the visit, even though I will not be going upto the castle at the top.

Going to go for another long journey tomorrow.