Owner:
squiz
Member
Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3072
|
18th February 2017
Hiking - Walking: Playas La Llana Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny Max Speed: Distance Covered:
Saturday 18th February – travel then walk **** Playas La Llana –
sunny
Good night on our road side overnight spot in Alicante apart from when the
bin men came to empty the bins at three in the morning!!! Woke to blue
skies and a flat calm Mediterranean, laid in bed reading while watching
joggers run around the turning circle. Mag took a coffee and went to sit
on the rocks on the sea shore and read her book in the sun. While we ate
our breakfast 5 racing stand up paddle boards whizzed past. We left and
followed the good N332 down the coast, it was actually deserted in-between
the high-rise holiday resorts and we lost count of the number of Lidl’s
at least six. We retuned the radio and sadly found an English radio
station for ‘Brits Abroad’ called Spectrum FM. They are even
advertising DFS furniture show rooms which we actually passed with all the
shop signs in full English. They also had an advert for an all-day
breakfast for 3.95 Euro. Football results followed the English news with
non-league Lincoln reaching the quarter finals of the FA cup, the first
time that’s happened for a 100 years!
We were looking for a flat-water windsurfing spot in the huge inland sea
called Mar Menor near Cartagena as recommended by my new Belgian friend.
There is a great picture of it in the European windsurf guide and thought
it would be easy to find, just head to Lo Pagan and there should be a road
out into the lagoon with great sailing to be had. Mag directed us to Lo
Pagan which was a lovely long beach side road with loads of jetty’s out
and loads of moored boats in the flat water. We even passed an old van
with windsurfers on. Things were looking good when we came to a roundabout
taking you out to a Natural Reserve, it was a cyclists/ walker’s paradise
with paths everywhere leading through etangs and salt working full of birds
as we spotted Avocets and Black Winged Stilts but no sign of the
windsurfing spot:( In fact we ended up back on the Med at a marina with a
nice carpark popular with fishermen.
We were hungry and should have had lunch but we walked over to the notice
board for the Playas La Llana, it was a long beach with the Med on one side
and the Mar Menor on the over, the beach goes for miles to the other side
of the lagoon but you can’t walk the complete length because the sea has
broken into the lagoon. I just wanted to walk a little way along the beach
to see if we could see the windsurfing spit so headed off at about 1.15 and
made it back to the van at 3.35 after walking about 6 miles!!! It was busy
with walkers and bikers on the nice solid sand, the first section was very
weedy but that soon cleared as we walked towards some big apartments in the
distance. At every slight turn in the beach we thought we were there but it
just went on and on! There were small dunes then salt workings to the right
and we saw an old windmill in the distance, the Molino De La Caketera and
turned towards it. All the salt beds were fenced off so we couldn’t get
to it directly. There were several people on a path over that way so we
walked along the side of the workings to a well-made path which we thought
took as back to the van. We passed flamingos, a Spoonbill feeding madly,
more Stilts and a Godwit before reaching the lovely white mill and the way
back to the van was fenced off so we had to return the way we came! Back at
the beach we turned right and made it to the rocks at the end of the beach
before the long walk back to the van with the breeze filling in, luckily a
tail wind:)
Knackered we had a well-deserved late lunch before having one last look for
the windsurfing spot. We got as far as the airport at Los Alcazares with
no luck so returned to Lo Pagan and stopped by the old van with the
windsurfers on to ask him where the secret spot was? It was a foreign plate
but the old boy turned out to be English and had been here for 20 years and
didn’t know where that picture was taken??? We had a long chat and I have
a new best friend as we are supposed to be having a beer tomorrow after
sailing:) and he is going to give me the password to his Columbian
girlfriend’s bar wi-fi!!! We returned to the port and found a nice little
carpark by the beach with 5 other campervans at Playas De La Torre
Derribaba, good view shame about the mozzies :( but once we shut the door
they were no problem.
After a cuppa and my Apple puff we walked to see the sunset over the
mountains/lagoon before tucking into Egg fried rice special, fingers
crossed Sunday brings some wind, the Levante is supposed to be coming:)
Photo Gallery
Here
|
Toys Used:
Statsbar:
About MY Statsbar
|