A Christmas salad

Well that’s Christmas done then, and we’ve slipped into a new decade. Twenty years ago, though it seems like only yesterday, we were seeing in the new millennium partaking of vodka from a colostomy bag. I’ll explain - we were in the crowded streets of Cardiff for the celebration alongside some medical students who’d snuck in the alcohol inside their jackets; a clever solution, and they were keen to share. Unwise, certainly, but we were too polite to refuse. So much has changed in those twenty years, not least the financial crash and Brexit. What will 2020 bring, I wonder - less cultural and political myopia, maybe? We can hope so. Hope springs eternal.

My Christmas treat this year was a quick rendezvous with my offspring at Heathrow before they took off to Canada for Christmas and Gareth’s is a mountain-bike (now, there’s a surprise). My little trip (and the bike-shopping, of course) required packing up at El Berro and heading down to civilisation. I flew out of Murcia International airport which was the easy part. Negotiating Gatwick airport and then bussing it to Heathrow was quite a nerve-wrangle, but it was worth it for some hours with Richard, Libby, Owen, Jess and the four little ones. Forty-eight hours later I was back in Spain, met by warm sunshine, happy dogs and Gareth of course. (My carbon footprint doesn’t look too good now though).

I must mention in passing how impressed I was with the helpfulness and friendliness of the staff at Gatwick and Heathrow. It was good to see that the Brexit mood hasn’t dented any willingness to be welcoming and to put oneself out. Everyone I came in contact with seemed genuinely happy to help me navigate my way around, though I hope it’s not just my grey hair and crazed lost look that stimulated such attention. I warmed to the thought that British niceness is still alive, in spite of atrocious weather.

Anyway, back on Spanish soil, one mountain bike later, Gareth, the dogs and I were parked up in Alcazares planning how to celebrate Christmas. We stocked the camper with lots of nice things to eat and drink and the local restaurant promised a meal where we could gaze at a Mediterranean blue sea while parakeets squawked among the dates in the palm trees. On Christmas Eve we made ourselves presentable and spent a few very enjoyable hours feasting on air-dried tuna, tuna tartare, delicious dips and bread, a salad to die for, crispy duck, sea bass, good Spanish wine and desserts from seventh heaven. Needless to say, the rest of the day was a blur.

View from our Christmas table

My younger grand-daughter’s parting gift to me at Heathrow was a virus that took hold of me as Christmas dawned. Her poor mum has also been battling with it apparently, out there in snowy British Columbia. The bug may by now have been well and truly shared among them all. I adore my four grandchildren, but like all small children, they are bug factories. Christmas passed uneventfully and rather inactively as a result.

The campsite in Alcazares, Mar Menor, is large, open, spacious, new, clean and well appointed. Beach fronted and with board walks across the marshland to the esplanade and town, it is well placed for mohomers seeking sunshine, warmth and convenience. For plane spotters the occasional activity in the adjacent St Javier military airfield is a bonus and for bird watchers there is ample bird life to be spied on, on the water and in the rushes. It’s a great place for motorhome spotting, too. We watched open-mouthed as bigger and bigger rigs sailed in and glided into their pitches. We watched with amusement as they unfolded with bump-outs, sometimes a garaged car, washing machine compartment and storage holds large enough to accommodate a family or two of stowaways. One sleek looking rig, duly parked up and with its whole 15 (ish) meter long pitch quickly enclosed by an expensive windbreak, disgorged three Pyrenean mountain dogs! The owners looked like mini people in comparison.

We’ve spent a lot of time wondering who such people are. Who, if they can afford such a vehicle, chooses to live like that, when they could so easily afford a holiday apartment or two, or stay in fancy hotels? Some, we have learned, choose to do so instead of buying a bricks-and-mortar home, changing the view from their window at regular intervals. But the number of places where it’s possible to berth are limited when you’re that big, and the challenges of getting to places, quite apart from the running costs, are mind-boggling. Our humble Hymer will do us very nicely, thank you.

Gareth used our time in Mar Menor to get used to his new bike and returned from one trip with a little gift for me - a new brake cable for the old rusty bike that we’d brought away with us as emergency transport and which is now apparently mine. He made the necessary repairs and adjustments that afforded us some pedal-power to breeze along the promenade together one afternoon. The dogs ran alongside, doing quite well at not getting in our way and scurrying off across the beach whenever they thought they could get away with it. It’s a shame they’re a bit too big for us to do what so many other leisure cyclists do with their dogs around here; carrying them in baskets or little trailers. Unfortunately, unless we’re inclined to kill our dogs by running them for miles, cycle rides together will require that they stay in the camper. 

If my description of Mar Menor and Alcazares sounds like a dream holiday destination, I should point out that nowhere is perfect. The town appears to be a modern development, established in the post-Franco boom time of tourism with lots of money spent on wide boulevards, hotels and apartment blocks. Unlike Benidorm, Alicante and other large resorts, the buildings are not high-rise so the place has an open, spacious and relaxed, if slightly synthetic, feel. The edges of the town, though, are ragged where money and enthusiasm have run out, probably as a result of the financial crash of 2008. Unfinished building projects lie about, graffitied, littered, forgotten. And, of course, the area suffered from some devastating rain storms last September and early December. Flood waters destroyed the beaches along so much of this coastline bringing with it muck and debris from inland. The mosquitoes are now thriving as a result; they certainly thrived on us!

It is hard to imagine what those floods must have been like when the sun shines benignly and the ice clinks in one’s glass of sangria, but a British ex-pat we chatted to in a cafe one day described how he’d had to be airlifted from his rooftop when the floods hit his property. He’s a bit cross that no one had warned him not to build his house on a flood plain! Three huge storm channels became overwhelmed with flood water and in no time his house was six foot under water. Evidence of there having been massive water flow is everywhere, including the road to the campsite and perimeter fence of the airfield where logs, bushes and other debris is stacked up against the wire at head height. We’ve seen so little rain here, ourselves......so far at any rate. 

The past few weeks has brought news of dreadful weather events in other parts of the world. When in typical British style, we commented to another camper on what was an unusually cold and windy day, he said “The weather’s bad all over the world”, and so it seems. I’m currently reading Yuval Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” and wondering whether my grandchildren will inherit a world worth living in. I did, by the way, bring with me a number of books written by climate change sceptics, thinking that I really need to balance my understanding of global warming. Unfortunately they have failed to convince me that we aren’t facing catastrophe.

In the meantime we must do our best to love one another and live more lightly on this beautiful planet of ours. Love shone from a photo message one morning when news came through that my eldest has finally done the right thing by his lady and his two children by proposing. She said “yes” and it has put a sparkle and a smile on things. Congratulations, my lovelies!

On Monday we drove back to El Berro and it was a bit like a homecoming. The virus came too but is losing its will to live now that we’re back in the mountains and the air is colder. There are no over-friendly mosquitoes, just lots of friendly fellow campers sharing a love of this place. We are here for a couple of weeks for Gareth to do a bit of mountain biking and for us to witness a proper Spanish Three Kings night. January 6th is also Gareth’s birthday, so I’ll see if the Kings will acknowledge the occasion while throwing sweeties to the local children.

El Berro - again