From Narbonne to Valance
Leaving La Manga – day 3
Category: La Manga 2013/14
Leaving La Manga – day 2
From St Raphael del Rio to Narbonne. Another excellent stop over place. Very close to the Carrefour. A circus was setting up across the road but no problems from them.
Leaving La Manga – day 1
We’ve had a great time here in La Manga but all good things must end and now it’s time to go skiing. First leg of the journey is to St Raphael del Rio.
Cartagena
The nearest city to where we stay at Caravanning La Manga. This blog is a visual introduction to the reader and a reminder to us of this historic city.
La Union
La Unión is a small town about 10 miles from us. It is difficult to find any significant history about the town but there is much evidence that people have dwelled in and around the area from caveman times. According to my web searches it seems that the main historic events happened in the more significant local areas such as Cartegena and even Cabo de Palos, however what is evident is that it has been a major mining area for the minerals lead, alum and silver. The surrounding areais scarred from excavations and many mine heads and working are visible.
Run in the hills with Lesley
Another lovely run. About 7 miles, roughly half across gently undulating hills and half along beach paths.
Run
Most runs don’t get logged here unless there are some nice pictures. Here are some from today.
Bateria de Cenizas – The Portman Guns
After a beautiful day yesterday, today was grey and overcast with no wind forecast, so when Derek said that Anne and He were going to have a walk to visit the Portman Guns we jumped at the opportunity to join them.
Portman is about 15 minutes away on the bike and the guns up a pleasant, wide track about 3km long. I can imagine this could be hot work on a sunny day but today it was perfect.
The two guns were built by Armstrong and Vickers (GB) and date back to the 1920s/1930s. They are very impressive at 381mm and a range of 35km. Along with the guns at Portman a series of gun batteries were built to protect the important port at Cartagena.
We finished with a ride into Portman Harbour to look at the beach. The sand is black! The area is now scarred by years of mining and although there have been efforts to clean the area up you can still see remains of pollution.
We went for coffee before the trip back home. A lovely day out.
Lesley’s birthday – hired car
Decided to hire a car for three days to coincide with Lesley’s birthday. We travelled south to Almeria to check out some of the campsites down there. Some were quite nice but none were as good as La Manga for windsurfing. We also travelled north to San Javier with similar results. Chinese meal on Thursday night was huge, we ended up taking enough home for another meal. Friday we took Derek and Anne to Cartagena for a big shop.