May half term 2024- Our adventures in Spain
Monday 27th May.
Following our relax on the glorious beach at Moncofa, we waved goodbye to our retreat and headed inland towards Toledo, an ancient walled city sitting on a hill top high above the plains of Spain. (Yes we did keep saying “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the Plain”- happily no rain for us though!)
Our home for the night was the really great Camping El Greco, a really lovely campsite set about 3 km on the outskirts of Toledo. It would have been walkable in, but it was quite warm, and later in the day when we arrived, so we opted for a dog friendly cab, which the campsite arranged for us.
The approach into Toledo was brilliant, as you rise up the hill you begin to see the large walls of the town rise up in front of you. The historic old town within the town walls is made up of tiny cobbled streets that weave their way round in circles. It was a great place to spend some time getting lost in the streets and exploring the nooks and crannies.
Unfortunately for us, our visit being on a Monday prevented us from visiting some of the Roman museums and ruins within the town, but we enjoyed exploring the other aspects of the town including the Jewish quarter and as I said, the back streets including of course some refreshment stops along the way.
The Roman bridge which crosses the river below the town is a marvellous sight and we enjoyed taking some photos of that on our walk back to the campsite. We really enjoyed our stay on El Greco, it’s a great site with lovely showers and manicured pitches. We could have easily spent another couple of days just chilling there!
Tuesday 28th May
As we departed Toledo, we made a stop at the Roman Circus site on the outskirts of the city. Unlike the Circus ruins in Tarragona, the site here had been transformed into a park area and whilst they weren’t quiet as in tact as the ones in Tarragona, we both liked the sensitivity in which the park had been developed around the ruins. You got a good sense of the layout of the area that once was home to Roman Chariot races, with the paths winding around the park not too dissimilar to how we imagined the tracks would have been.
From Toledo we travelled back out to the coast. At this point our original ‘rough’ plan had gone out of the window. We were anticipating going to the coastal stops on our way back up to Calais, hence having gone inland yesterday to Toledo. But last night, over some delicious Toledo regional wine and a lovely meal at Gandalf, we floated the idea of perhaps being a bit more ambitious than originally planned. When I plotted the trip, I had put in 2 nights in most places, which obviously reduced the places we could visit, but gave us plenty of non driving rest days. However, trying to utilise public transport here in Spain with a dog was proving harder than in other places where we’ve managed well; generally dogs aren’t allowed on any buses, and so in reality it was becoming obvious that we’d either need to walk into towns or drive in (we left the bikes at home this time). If we were driving in then we may as well drive on each day too. Suddenly, this meant that we could probably achieve reaching the Northern coast of Spain where there is the most impressive Roman Lighthouse in the world. So thats how we found ourselves making our way 5 hours back to the coast to Cartagena, just 24 hours after driving 5 hours inland to Toledo!
We found a great private aire on the outskirts of Cartegena, there literally very few options for this place, and got ourselves checked in. The owners were really friendly, they’d ere also happy with awnings and chairs being out, and had a shower available. They kindly organised a dog friendly cab for us and by 2.30pm we were enjoying a stein of beer each in Cartegena.
Cartegena has a picturesque harbour and whilst we were there a huge super yacht belonging to one of the world’s richest men was in town too. Isn’t google amazing!
Our reason for visiting Cartegena was its Roman ruins of course, and after a nice tapas lunch we set about exploring. Sadly, despite having our dog bag, Jazz wasnt allowed in theatre ruins, but we found a great vantage point from the back and got some good pictures.
There is an excellent Roman museum and archeological park which Keith enjoyed – it’s only just recently opened up, whilst I enjoyed a couple of wines with Jazz in a nearby bar.
We were hoping to eat out, but again struggled to find anywhere serving tapas which surprised us, most placed weren’t serving it seemed. Perhaps it’s a town that comes to life when a cruise ship is in town, who knows. Keith really enjoyed the museum at Cartegena but for me I wasnt too fussed about the town if I’m honest. I’m not sure it was worth the 10 hours we’d spent getting there, perhaps if you had longer, or didn’t have a dog it would be different. Regardless, we enjoyed our stay on the Aire and had a great night sleep following some tasty local cheeses and meats that I’d managed to pick up at the spar on route back!
Wednesday 29th May
We were supposed to heading to Cordoba today but it was currently having a heatwave, so we decided to give it a few days to cool off there and we stuck to the coast. We headed for a fantastic private Aire on the outskirts of Malaga. We also managed to bagsie the last beach front space much to our delight having not booked in advance, so arriving around midday, having had a food shop at Cartengena and slightly lazier start to the day, we parked up and literally sat and enjoyed the view.
The beach in front of us was a pebble beach and a dog friendly one too, so great for us, but actually we didn’t even go down onto it! The view was so nice on our pitch, and we so enjoyed just chilling on our pitch that we didn’t move! We had a fantastic season food bbq for tea, and enjoyed the afternoon and evening immensely. This site would have been ideal to stay at for a few days, it had amazing showers and was on the bike path to cycle into Malaga which I’ve been told is a nice city. As our beach front paradise was only available for the one night though, we decided to just enjoy the site for once!
