Christmas break in southern Spain.

Sitting in the afternoon sunshine outside of our bungalow at Camping Marjal.

We've been at Camping Marjal on the Costa Blanca for a week and enjoying mild weather with daytime temperatures of 18 to 21 C but dropping at night but not usually enough to use the camper heater. We've been exploring the local towns by cycle including Catral, Callosa  de Segura, El Fonda and Cervillente. The latter ride was amusing as the route had been signed since our visit last year. However, the cycle route came to a full stop as it approached a new motorway. I enquired with some locals who directed us over the new road to find what remained of the old road on the other side. This proved beyond us as after surmounting to the gravel and sand base of the motorway we couldn't see a way down. Eventually we retraced our steps (or wheels) and found a road to El Realengo and the main N340 into Cervillente. After a casual time looking around the town we decided on another route back (aided by my new GPS!). This went well, crossing under the new forming motorway and main rail line and then I noted a pista on the right that looked like it would connect to our inbound route. After a while the track disappeared in a palm plantation and although we were only a few yards from the road we wanted, there didn't appear to be a way though the dense shrubbery and dikes. Retracing our wheels (again) we found another route on tarmac to get us back to the El Fonda Natural Park and the campsite.

One of the problems with this area is that the 1:200,000 Spanish provincial maps or Michelin maps don't have many minor roads marked. The Garmin Europe navigator GPS map for Spain includes some minor road and pistas but misses the majority so on the minor roads to, for example  Callosa, the Navigator shows us driving across fields although the roads are well established older roads of the area. The only maps I have found that include the many tarmac minor roads are the "Mapa Topografico Nacional de Espana" which are on a 1:50000 scale but cover quite small areas and seem difficult to get hold of in the UK (or here).

Another interesting experience was finding Alicante airport to pick up dad. Checking on the airport internet site I got the GPS coordinates for the Airport. I checked on the Garmin GPS and it gave me the same location. This ended up taking us to the south side of the airport on relatively minor roads to try and reach one of the runways by a track alongside the perimeter fence. Needless to say, we ignored this and eventually found the Santa Pola road and turned north to find the first signs we'd seen for the airport and at the same time seeing an Easy Jet flight landing (probably from Edinburgh). As we found on our return journey, the route is very simple by motorway particularly when you're not starting from a landing runway!

Feliz Navidad or Merry Christmas and all the best for the new year..2013.