Friday 24th – Monday 27th August, Kymi 69km, meltingly hot
Shortly after the previous post we went for a swim to clear our heads – water much warmer than in Fuzeta, but it still helped – and decided to move pitches. After a quick tour we found another spot and informed the Reception that our neighbours were awful and we were moving. Result!
We ended up between 2 families weekending together (the second arrived too late to get our pitch and of course we didn’t know!) and they were lovely. More attempts to communicate with virtually no common language, but somehow we managed. Our faith in the Spanish was somewhat restored.
I worked all day Friday and we decided to stay until Monday – it was just too hot to face the drive. We did a bit of Kymi touring to look around and decided it was pretty awful everywhere except where we were – which turned out to be Bolnuevo and not Mazarron, despite the campsite name! A small place with a few restaurants, small supermarket and some interestingly eroded lumps of rock (!)
Puerto de Mazarron and the coast beyond was overdeveloped and crowded with pebbly beaches and unfinished apartments everywhere. We ended up seeing it all twice trying to find petrol the next day. Footnote: they also have a ridiculously high number of pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, all set to red when you get to them.
On Monday we travelled 235 miles to Moncofa and wondered why. Why did we choose here? Why does anyone choose here? Why isn’t there any breeze on the site when its so close to the sea? Why is the pool saltwater? Why are the advertised apartments so expensive when many are clearly not going to be finished?
I can only answer why we were there – because we aimed for Sagunt north of Valencia based on a guide book entry which failed to mention that the port and castle – which we never found – were surrounded by an industrial area of enormous proportions. In fact all the coastal regions we saw between Mazarron and Moncofa were the same. Moncofa was no exception – the apartments go back 5 streets, a small town centre and then industry. We couldn’t be bothered to go any further and the campsite was actually very nice – except the onsite restaurant decided to close when we needed it!
Don’t make the same mistake we did!!