Where’s Colin? He’s sitting in another beachside car park a few kilometres south of Mojacar, at N37º4.832, W1º51.018. The sea is so close that if we were to stand by his front bumper and put a bit of oomph behind some stone throwing, we could probably hit the water.
Arriving at Mojacar this morning there was a notable difference between what we were seeing and all of the other seaside towns and villages we have driven through. There was not a bit of wasteland to be seen. Either side of us was manicured land, and on the landward side of the road stood pristine white hotels. Not nasty high-rises either, but buildings in keeping with their surroundings. According to our guidebook, Mojacar is eastern Almeria’s main resort, and is hugely popular with both Spaniards and foreign tourists, and it certainly had a holiday resort look to it.
Our interest was in Mojacar Pueblo, the hillside village which lies about 2km inland. Whilst there’s nothing there to see, other than a small church, it’s an attractive looking place, comprising white cube-like buildings sitting wrapped around a hillside, so worth a look around, I thought. By parking in a beachside car park, we even got a reasonable walk into the bargain as we took what our guidebook writer considered to be a ‘punishing hike’ but I would just class as a bit of an uphill walk. Good quality pavements certainly took it out of the category of ‘hike’ in my view:
The blob of white in the middle of that photo is the village, and here it is closer to:
A wander around was had, the view was admired from the east-facing viewing platform…
… and we solicited information from the Tourist Office on what walking routes there are nearby. We didn’t come away with a map, as had been the case in Orihuelo, but we were given a good few sheets of printed information. We would have gone straight off to do the short walk around Mojacar gardens, except that by the time we sussed out where it started we were on the wrong side of the hill and lunchtime was upon us, so back down the hill we went to raid Colin’s fridge.
Twenty eight degrees was the temperature in Colin when we reached him, making me glad we’d closed his blinds before we went out, or it would have been unbearable. As it went, there was a cooling breeze to the day, so a few minutes with the side-door open soon had us back to the low-twenties inside.
The afternoon saw us move along the coast to try to find where one of the other recommended walks starts. The spot was found, and a few minutes later we found our overnight spot, which sits by Macenas Castle. “Hold on!” thought I, “that sounds familiar”. Consultation with the walk notes confirmed that the route we’d intended to take tomorrow comes through this very car park. Sorted – we’ll just go and do the second half of it in the morning (having now worked out that by ‘circular walk of 10km’ they mean ‘an out-and-back route totalling 10km’, with all of the interesting features lying at this end).
I mentioned the other day the quality of some of the English translations on information signs, and whilst I stress again that I’m grateful for any information given in a language I can understand, we couldn’t help but have a smile at some of the sentences in the Macenas Castle description, reproduced below:
Arriving at Mojacar this morning there was a notable difference between what we were seeing and all of the other seaside towns and villages we have driven through. There was not a bit of wasteland to be seen. Either side of us was manicured land, and on the landward side of the road stood pristine white hotels. Not nasty high-rises either, but buildings in keeping with their surroundings. According to our guidebook, Mojacar is eastern Almeria’s main resort, and is hugely popular with both Spaniards and foreign tourists, and it certainly had a holiday resort look to it.
Our interest was in Mojacar Pueblo, the hillside village which lies about 2km inland. Whilst there’s nothing there to see, other than a small church, it’s an attractive looking place, comprising white cube-like buildings sitting wrapped around a hillside, so worth a look around, I thought. By parking in a beachside car park, we even got a reasonable walk into the bargain as we took what our guidebook writer considered to be a ‘punishing hike’ but I would just class as a bit of an uphill walk. Good quality pavements certainly took it out of the category of ‘hike’ in my view:
The blob of white in the middle of that photo is the village, and here it is closer to:
A wander around was had, the view was admired from the east-facing viewing platform…
… and we solicited information from the Tourist Office on what walking routes there are nearby. We didn’t come away with a map, as had been the case in Orihuelo, but we were given a good few sheets of printed information. We would have gone straight off to do the short walk around Mojacar gardens, except that by the time we sussed out where it started we were on the wrong side of the hill and lunchtime was upon us, so back down the hill we went to raid Colin’s fridge.
Twenty eight degrees was the temperature in Colin when we reached him, making me glad we’d closed his blinds before we went out, or it would have been unbearable. As it went, there was a cooling breeze to the day, so a few minutes with the side-door open soon had us back to the low-twenties inside.
The afternoon saw us move along the coast to try to find where one of the other recommended walks starts. The spot was found, and a few minutes later we found our overnight spot, which sits by Macenas Castle. “Hold on!” thought I, “that sounds familiar”. Consultation with the walk notes confirmed that the route we’d intended to take tomorrow comes through this very car park. Sorted – we’ll just go and do the second half of it in the morning (having now worked out that by ‘circular walk of 10km’ they mean ‘an out-and-back route totalling 10km’, with all of the interesting features lying at this end).
I mentioned the other day the quality of some of the English translations on information signs, and whilst I stress again that I’m grateful for any information given in a language I can understand, we couldn’t help but have a smile at some of the sentences in the Macenas Castle description, reproduced below:
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