In September, before we left the UK, we booked a hire car (website) on the internet. After doing some research we managed to get a good price for three months hire (300 Euros) but we also decided to purchase ‘collision waver damage’ insurance in the UK as Martin Lewis advised (£180) so we wouldn’t have to buy it when we picked up the car (website)
On Saturday 1st November our friend John (Dixon), very kindly took us to San Janvier airport (about 35 minutes drive away) to pick the car up. It was completely straight forward and we drove away in a 4-door Opel Corsa with only 8000Km on the clock, a very nice clean car. We did a small detour on our way back to La Manga to explore the town of Torre Pacheco where we will be doing a half marathon race on December 14th. After some shopping in the Mercadona and Aldi supermarkets we drove back to the campsite.
Our first trip out was on the following Tuesday when it rained heavily all morning after a windy night. Derek and Anne came with us to the Parc Mediterraneo in Cartegena where we did some shopping and browsing around the shops there – Decathlon, Leroy Merlin and Carrefour etc. We bought a vacuum cleaner for the motor home!
It is very handy having the car to go shopping or to visit new places we haven’t been to before. Also it has enabled us to enter a couple of races, the half marathon in Torre Pacheco as mentioned before and a 14Km race in Cartegena on Sunday 23rd November. Derek and Anne have also been able to do some shopping with us so that they don’t have to carry it all on their motor bike, like we have done in previous years.
On Sunday 16th November we went out for lunch to a restaurant called Meson Galindo, which a friend recommended to us. It is in a village called La Puebla about 20 minutes away. We hadn’t booked a table but they fitted us in at the back as we had arrived early enough but very soon the whole place filled up with mainly Spanish people. The food was very nice and reasonably priced, 10 Euros, 12 Euros or 15 Euros for a very substantial meal. (website). We hopefully will be going there again.
