6. Cartagena & La Sierra Espuna 🏔️ 🚴

The Murcia region is an area we’re unfamiliar with, but having read that it gets the most daily hours of sunshine all year round, in the whole of Spain, we were keen to explore more 😃 The city of Cartagena seemed more appealing to us than Murcia itself, so that’s what we plumped for. There are a couple of campervan aires on the outskirts of the city, but actually getting a space proved more difficult than we realised, as all booked up. Eventually we got the nod that a place had become available, so we arrived at Finca Bazul which would be our base for a couple of days (all we can seem to manage in a city 🤣)

Having secured the parking space we booked onto a walking tour for the following day - history and tapas tour of Cartagena 😃 Surprisingly there wasn’t much sun, and it was fairly chilly, but we embraced it nonetheless. The owner of the Finca drove us down to the harbour in his taxi to meet Carmello, our host for the tour. It was Valentine’s Day, so lots of heart shaped and flower decorations - and obvious photo opportunities 🤣

The main interest with Cartagena is its Roman and Greek heritage, its significance as an important naval base, and its fishing industry. Interesting though that the sizeable Roman remains on display have only been discovered / uncovered within the past 40 years. The city has some amazing heritage buildings, but is a weird mix with the juxtaposition of new modern development. Anyway, Carmello showed us around the main sites (just the 2 of us on the tour 😃) - an interesting chap, who proceeded to tell us about a woman who only wanted him for sex! Anyway, back to the tour…..

Valentines Day ❤️

Statue of Cartagena sailor

Cartagena

Newly excavated Roman theatre remains 

The first tapas bar we visited seemed to be an old Cartagenan institution - beautiful wooden, iron and tile fixtures and fittings, and depicting what the city is famous for - naval base and fishing. 

Traditional bar for our first tapas stop

Statue of a Cartagena fisherman 

Pistou topped toasts with quail egg - delicious 

Tile picture telling the story of anchovy fishing and production - of which Cartagena is famous for

The second tapas bar, seemingly another institution, was already entertaining customers at 11.30 in the morning 🤣 Again, internally depicting the heritage of the city. Afterwards we continued on, seeing further sites, and our final tapas of Spanish tortilla.

Another heritage tapas bar

Liqueurs & spirits on draft 

Russian salad and anchovy on breadstick toast - it doesn’t look much but it was absolutely delicious 🤤 

Our third tapas stop with Carmello for traditional Spanish tortilla

Graffiti art

Cartagena 

Finca Bazal is an old farm located on the western outskirts of the city - another established business diversifying into tourism, and specifically campervan facilities. Again we have been completely surprised at just how many vans are travelling around (loads!), and at what we consider low season! Being outside the city, and in a non touristy, quite upmarket residential area, eating out opportunities were very typically Spanish. Another evening we were there, not wanting to wait until @8.30 in the evening to eat (we still struggle with Spanish eating times 🤣), we decided to try out a couple of local bars for the traditional counter top tapas instead - and what a delight it was! Both bars we went to were authentically Spanish, non English speaking, but extremely friendly and welcoming bar tenders, and with delicious tapas. Although limited choices, the food we had was great, and I think that the whole bill for the evening, including drinks, came it at @24 euros 😃

Our base at Finca Bazal

Tasty tapas - local anchovies 

One of my favourites - spicy potatoes cooked with aubergine 

Sautéed garlic mushrooms 

Sunset at Finca Bazal

Probably fair to say that although we had a lovely time around Cartagena, we didn’t really warm to the place as we had hoped - think we’d expected more openly visible Roman heritage, but so much of it is enclosed, and that weird juxtaposition with modern new developments, and in many cases still under excavation - but still really pleased to have had the opportunity to visit, and learn a bit more about that small corner of Spain 😃

In contrast, another place we explored in the Murcia region was La Sierra Espuna - about an hour north of Cartagena - a fabulous Natural Park, with loads of opportunities for biking and walking. The campsite was at El Berro, a really small town within the Natural Park. Disappointingly the 3 bars & restaurants in the village were closed, but fortunately there was an amazing bakery - David’s - so freshly baked croissants and pan au chocolate in the mornings more than made up for it 🤣

David’s bakery 🤣

Lemon trees full of fruit

El Berro

One of our main motivations for being in Spain right now was to take advantage of the great weather for outdoor activity - and Sierra Espuna certainly provided lots of opportunity.The walking and biking was great, with loads of marked trails. - often displayed on large maps in villages and towns, with really clear signposting at the start of tracks showing distances and times. We did some great walks, direct from the campsite, but was far too hot for Rubes to join us - and no water in the river beds either. Ruby did seem happy though with her daily walk through a wonderful dried up river bed - beautiful with the almond blossoms starting to emerge.

Huge cactus 

El Berro walking

Ruby’s daily walk along the dried up river bed

Ruby wanting to go further 😂

There was loads of biking opportunities for Dave - he was in his element 😃 Helpfully he got chatting with a guy from the UK - a keen mountain biker, who had been at the site for about 2 months, and was a font of knowledge for all the great trails in the area. 

Biking in La Sierra Espuna

Tried yet again to source some contact lenses - Specsavers at La Zenia on the Murcia coast. Despite a very helpful English woman on the phone, it seemed that it would take @3 weeks to get hold of them - so obviously not within our timeframe - decided now to give this up as a bad job 😃 But what was interesting was the English dedicated telephone line at the store, and the English woman serving - we had no idea that that part of the coast was actually little England - something we found out when leaving the region when we pulled off the motorway there for the supermarket and decathlon 🤣 It certainly wasn’t our cup of tea - a sprawling mass of concrete and shopping malls, and even with most of the signage in English. Anyway, it served a purpose - shopping and bike oil purchased, and on we went, starting to head back up north 🤣

Hasta Luego 😃