Renovation of a Derelict House in Brittany, France: Renovation Project

Renovation Project - Camping on the Costa Blanca

We leave Montserrat today and are heading to Catral, which is a small town in Alicante region of Spain; we are going to visit Andy, who helped us with our electrics in the beginning. This is going to be our first bit of guaranteed sunshine and I cannot wait, also looking forward to seeing Andy again obviously, but guaranteed sunshine!!!!!!!

The drive is just under 400 miles but the roads are clear, the only real problem we have is that the sat nav will not find where we are going again!

We stop at a point not too far from where we think we should be going to try to get a different address for the sat nav, but cannot get hold of Andy. We are sat in a service station with free wifi drinking fresh squeezed orange juice in the sun, I really don’t mind at this moment that we have no idea where we are or where we are going, I could just sit here all day!

We eventually get to where we are supposed to be and set up our tent, the campsite is amazing and I would highly recommend it to anyone, however I would not recommend camping on it!!!! The sun is blazing and for the entire week we live in an oven (I know there really is no pleasing me at times!) a caravan is far more suitable, as much as you love the sun when there is no shade and no respite it can get a little bit too much in a tent!

We have an amazing week here and meet some interesting people. We spend an evening in Catral for a fiesta and the town is decorated and there is an orchestra playing and a band later in the evening, we now realise that there does not appear to be a big reason for the Spanish to throw a fiesta (these are our kind of people!).

The majority of our week consisted of reading my book, relaxing, sunbathing and generally doing very little else, other than getting eaten by mosquito’s.

We do spend a day in Alicante, this is a spectacular city with a big castle overlooking it, many people holidaying in this region tend to fly to Alicante and then drive straight out of it, but it really is worth a day looking around.

We stop for some tapas on the main boulevard, which is tree lined on either side, we also pass some trees that appear to be made from a mass of enormous roots, and these are quite amazing to look at.

We then decide to walk to the top of the castle; this is not for the feint hearted. The walk seems to go on forever and again we have no water with us, we just hope to goodness there is a shop there.

The castle is quite spectacular but the views are the most amazing bit, you can see right over the city and far out to sea.

As we are about to leave we notice a lift, this takes you down to the sea front, you do not have to walk up to the castle! As we leave the lift at the bottom we notice the ticket machine, there is a sign that says it is out of order and apologises for the inconvenience!!!! The only inconvenience is not having to pay, no apology required.

We wander over to the harbour for a drink and find a great bar, unfortunately there are no seats in the shade (I know, I have spent weeks dreaming about the sun and now want to sit in the shade) we play a game of musical chairs until enough people leave and we get the seats that we want, now we just settle down to some people and randy dove watching (they were actually mating on one of the tables and knocked glasses off at one point, that’s the doves not the people!).

We are aware of the reputation the Brits have abroad and today we thought that maybe it wasn’t as bad as the reputation they could have if people listened in to conversations, in the bar there was a group of young men and women (Brits) and we can only assume they were privately educated and very wealthy (not by the level of intellect in their conversation but by their voices) they kept us entertained for quite some time, here is one little example of their conversation, drinking Mojito’s (a drink with fresh mint in it)

Guy 1. Try this

Guy 2. Its mint

Guy 1. I know but just try it, it’s really minty

Guy 2. OMG that’s so minty!!!!

Guy 2 to Guy 3. Just try this

This conversation actually lasted about five minutes, and was probably one of the more intelligent conversations they had!