The Launder's big adventure

Wednesday 22nd November - Cartegena

We left early in the morning to start our 4 and ½ hour journey to Cartegena. When we stopped for lunch there happened to be the opportunity to wash the caravan. When we had travelled from Ainsa to Barcelona the car and caravan had become completely filthy. Jon was not happy! He almost jumped with glee when he saw a digger go into the car wash so he knew it would be big enough for us too! The caravan came out gleaming and Jon was again happy and proud! With this we set off for the last leg of the journey, we remembered 10 miles down the road that we had not put on the stabiliser, so we took the next exit and then ended up driving down a small service road which was fine until we came to some very big and steep dips which would have been fine in the car and even fun but with the caravan was definitely another Whoop, Whoop situation! We drove slowly down one, the bottom of the caravan clearing the road by about 1 inch, when we cleared this we saw another one and assumed there would be more again, it was time to turn around, after a 10 point turn we headed back for the motorway.

We turned up to the site to be told we had to walk to find a suitable pitch we did this en famille. This was a camping and caravanning rally site and we went to the stewards who were instantly full of advice on where to park, we were overwhelmed with the friendliness of all the residents who all had their bit of advice on the best place to park. When we brought the caravan to park it, the pitches suddenly seemed a lot smaller then they at first appeared. We had advice on how best to park it, Archie in the pitch next to ours told us to unhitch and he would get some men to help us push it into place. From out of nowhere appeared 5 or 6 men leaping on the van to push it into place. Next thing we knew Archie was bringing out 2 glasses of wine for us, what more of a welcome could you want?

A few pitches down there is a Cornishman, we know this by the fact there are two great big Cornish flags flapping in the wind for everyone to see. As soon as he knew Jon was Cornish he brought down a flag for us, Jon was pleased, although he suspected the main reason was to compete against the Devon flag flying two pitches down from us.
We have spent a couple of days relaxing, visiting the local beach (1km walk), the local park, cleaning and sorting out the caravan, food shopping (again!) and visiting the local national park, where there was 150 ft well unprotected ready for the boys to run headlong into - luckily they didn’t!


Sunday 26th November
We had the opportunity to visit the Medieval Fayre in Cartegena. there were loads of stalls with authentic herbs, fruits, nuts, soaps, cakes, bags, rugs etc. The stallholders were all dressed in costume and the whole affair was a lot of fun. There were donkey rides for the children where they rode up and down amongst the crowds with a man ringing a bell. There were acrobatic shows interspersed with a man lying on a bed of nails, standing on broken glass with his bare feet and knocking 6 inch nails into his nose! There was also a mini Spanish play involving a rather good sword fight, much to the boys delight. We had a sweet hot tea and lots of almond cakes in a Moroccon style tent and watched loaves being baked in a big stone oven.

Sunday 19th November - Valencia

Sunday we left Villanova park and headed for Moncofa, near Valencia.
Jon has become rather paranoid about the safety of our belongings and car and caravan and we never leave the caravan unattended when we stop at a service station and we keep a constant vigilance i.e. we take it in turns to go to the toilet, the person left in the car must keep a lookout with the mirrors and lock the door. Jon has also programmed the key fobs so that the spare button is used as an alarm so if there is trouble we can press the button and the alarm on the car goes off. When we have a picnic we make sure we can see the whole car and caravan and one of us is always watching it.
Whilst staying in Villanova Park Jon learnt that the Dutch man parked close by had fallen foul to some Spanish bandits. At a service station on the way to the park his tires had been slashed with a knife and two men had turned up with a flat bed lorry offering to tow his caravan away, whilst the couple were refusing the offer their bags and wallets had been stolen out of their open car door. Perhaps Jon was justified about his paranoia, I no longer thought it a joking matter!

Locating the campsite was not as easy as one would have liked, it is easy to get lost in these small Spanish towns with sporadic signage and lots of one way systems and tiny streets. At one point we did end up in a dead end street with the caravan in tow, a predicament we were trying to avoid! However, Jon expertly turned the outfit around and we set off again. We arrived at the campsite to promptly knock the caravan into a metal post, we completely bent the post in two and knocked off one of the high side lights from the caravan, dent number 2, the site owner was very kind and found all the bits from the light and returned it to us, they did not charge us for the damage.

The following morning Jon flooded the caravan by leaving a tap on mid way through doing the washing up when he decided to start chatting to the people next door. The bed had a puddle of water in it, the floor was awash and the water was running out the front of the caravan. We then had to proceed to empty out the contents of the front of the caravan and try and soak up all the water. The other campers were fantastic and rallied round, some brought sponges and buckets, other brought heaters to help dry out the caravan and others recounted tales of other flooding incidents to make us feel better.

The next day we visited the local caves “Coves de Sant Josep” this was fortunately 15 – 20 minutes drive away, or 30 – 40 when you don’t know the way and rely on a satellite navigation system that does not have up to date information regarding the road numbers and which does not cover most local roads in the smaller towns!
The guides did not speak English but this did not stop our enjoyment and our guide was able to get many points across. We travelled by boat to start with in some tunnels that had us crouched over almost double in some places. We then followed a path as just a family to meet the guide at the end and to return by boat. We were able to understand the guide enough to notice the rocks that looked like a dog, a jellyfish and a dragon. We later explored the small free museum dedicated to the Roman and Iberian finds and later went on to look at the local Roman aqueduct.

In the afternoon we went to a local village to see the fishing boats come in, we watched them sort and unload the fish and the boys found it all fascinating. Certainly a good bit of home education! The boys had already enjoyed a fresh fish from these boats the previous night, kindly supplied by our neighbours.

Thursday 16th November - Barcelona
The night before we travelled to Barcelona the heavens opened and continued to rain all night and the following day. We were so glad that we took down the awning on the previous day! The site was quite small and narrow and we were quite pleased we had managed to drive it to reception without any bother. We paid up and started to leave knocking over a large terracotta plant pot and the tree inside! Oops! The first dent on the caravan! The pot was still in one piece though.

We made it to Villanova Park just south of Barcelona in time for tea. The boys had watched the DVD all the way and behaved exemplary. Hurrah! A tactic we will use again!! The park had a small wildlife park and the boys had a great time feeding some of the deer, goats and birds. We had a pleasant night despite the mossies taking us by surprise and feasting well.

Friday 17th November
On Friday we set off early to explore Barcelona, I (Ali) was driving. As expected with a big city and 3 little children it was stress, stress, stress! First off driving in a city you don’t know with a zillion different lanes, parking signs which mysteriously disappeared and mad taxi drivers zooming in and out of lanes, not to mention the well hidden traffic lights made for a pretty tense time not helped by cries of “this is boring”, “When can we get out?” and other such useful phrases. We finally found somewhere to park but couldn’t get the parking meter to accept our card – as we had no change – so had to move on. Jon decided to take over the driving, I think he had got fed up with the clenched knuckles, the fact that my face was pressed against the windscreen, big sighing and the snappy answers to anything he said! We finally managed to park in a 24hr car park, the parking attendant was really helpful by writing down the streets where the car park was situated so that we would be able to find our way back, it didn’t help that the car park was off the map that we had!

The other problem was that we were miles away from anything interesting – so we dragged the kids at a snails pace with cries, that fill a parents heart with dread when they are in the middle of a foreign city and where they speak so little of the local language it is not worth mentioning, of “I need a Poo!” They also spread out each request by about ½ an hour each time. So one Hotel, one pizza place and one café later we had eaten our lunch and were outside the famous Gaudi Church still being built, Sagrada Familia.

To my surprise the boys really enjoyed it, they loved looking at the numerous sculptures at the front and the back of the church, they particularly liked the turtles holding up the pillars and the bowls of fruit at the top of some of the spires. The stained glass window was truly beautiful and reflected wonderfully onto the pillars inside. We probably missed quite a bit by not travelling to the top in the lift and then working our way down the hundreds of steps. The 45minute wait for the lift was enough to put us off, the thought of standing in a queue for that length of time with the boys just didn’t bear thinking about. So with that done we retired to the play park across the road. So not only are we touring all the European toilets we are also touring most of the play parks! I made the comment that we could probably have enjoyed the church just as much by looking at the outside without paying to go inside, but Jon was quick to point out the opportunity to see a church of this size being built is very rare indeed.

We took in Las Ramblas during the evening, it felt like the city had come alive. We thoroughly enjoyed walking down this famous street and looking in all the street vendors stalls. There were many pet stalls with tortoises, large chickens, fish, parrots, hamsters and so on, the kids really enjoyed these. There were many mime artists along the way that added to the magic, although the lady dressed as a sunflower had the children screaming in fear and clinging to me for dear life when she decided to pretend to chase them.
It was time for tea and the boys were really tired, but we wanted to reach the pedestrian swing bridge in Port Vell at the end, we climbed and played at the base of the Christopher Columbus statue and then walked over the bridge to find tea only to be confronted by a €100 per person set menu which we kindly declined. We headed back the way we had come and eventually came across a tapas bar very reasonably priced and we had a fantastic meal there. The Spanish are always very welcoming of the children, especially Jory with his blonde curly locks, blue eyes and willingness to shout “Hola”, “Gracias” and “Adios”.

The following day we decided to visit Tarragona. We arrived in time for lunch enjoyed by the beach and the kids had an hour to frolic about in their underpants. We then made our way to the Roman amphitheatre, which had fantastic veiws to the sea. Jon and the boys had much fun pretending to be gladiators and shouting “Hooh Hah” every so often much to the amusement of the other sightseers.

We traversed a bit more of the town and then headed home. Although we did not see all that Tarragona had to offer we enjoyed the gloriously warm weather and we were all totally relaxed. We felt great!