12th January 2017. Zeneta, Spain.

We left Cabos de Palos today, Darren had knocked his laptop on the floor a few days ago and we needed electric hook up to see whether he could fix it.  We found an aire near Murcia and made our way there.

The journey there should have been straight forward but as ever it wasn’t.  As we drove into the town it suddenly became extremely busy and we realised that we’d made the mistake of arriving at school pick up time, Darren took that in his stride and carried on along the crowded roads however as we neared the aire we encountered road works and were diverted away from the road we needed to follow by one of the workmen.  There after followed numerous back tracks, checking maps and trying to find other ways in.  Naturally this had to be an aire which was surrounded by other roads that you could only use if you were below 2.5 m high and weighed less than 3.5 tonnes.  Many of the roads also ended in a dirt track, not good for a motorhome.  We eventually went back round to the road works with the feint hopes that we’d only been diverted because of the big lorry which had been in front of us that was delivering gravel for the job.  The schools and the roads had cleared by this time but unfortunately again the man pointed to the diversion but this time we realised that he was giving us a signal to say turn left at the next road.  It had been so hectic the last time round that we hadn’t even seen the road.

We drove along to the aire, squeezed through the ubiquitous tight entrance to the lane running up to the aire (I’m sure someone has written a law throughout Europe that says you can’t run an aire unless you make the road up to it and the entrance into it as difficult as possible for anyone with a motorhome or caravan to negotiate).  However Sod’s Law came into play and as we reached the gates we saw a motorhome arrive just before us and the owner told us there was no more room.  This left us in rather a tight spot, literally, he was just closing the gates when Darren tooted the hooter and asked where we could turn around, the man reluctantly opened the gate and let us turn around in the entrance.  What had sounded like a lovely aire in an olive grove was absolutely HEAVING with vans and people.

We breathed a sign of relief that there had been no room and carried on to the next aire 15 minutes up the road.

It turned out to be perfect.  Small enough not to be heaving with people.  The owners were very friendly.  We were presented with a basket of fresh oranges and lemons when we had settled in.  Considering it’s surrounded by roads it’s surprisingly quiet in the evening.  There were two rooms for guests to sit in one of which had a fire burning in the stove at night.  On top of that there were LOADS of little birds  feeding off the olives that had fallen off the tree near us.   Superb!