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.