Well, this is clearly not
the year we’ll be spending much time in Oliva then! As the blue skies of
Almería gave way to stormy skies over the Costa Azahar, we bailed out and
headed further north to what has become a favourite transit freecamp overlooking
the sea at Alcossebre – complete with my flat rock hopefully still stashed in
the bushes that we use to level the van…
The weather here had been equally
wet, but we had some miles under our belts and were happy to sleep up and see
what the next day would bring. The
road to our spot had been closed due to flooding but undeterred, we drove past the
signs, confident we could reach our stop, and parked up, complete with flat
rock still in place! And, with the sound of a raging sea crashing against the
beach we were parked on, we settled in for a wild night…
Morning brought calmer
weather and a promise of sun later, so we headed off to the campsite at Torre
la Sal for a couple of days of sunny weather before the next leg across the
border into France. As the sun shone and the disappointment of the weather in Oliva
faded into the background, we decided to use the morning to explore some ruins
up the coast that we’d not had time to go to earlier in the trip, and to treat
ourselves to lunch.
Passing the Torre in
sunshine this time, we wandered up to the start of the local nature park where
the ruins were signposted as a couple of km away. After what seemed like a lot
longer than 2km, we stopped and asked a local couple on the beach whether the
small outcrop we could see in the distance might be the ruins, to which the
bloke replied whilst laughing – ‘yes – but they are only about four
bricks!’ Thinking I may have lost
something in translation we pressed on to find that whilst four might have been
an exaggeration, there really wasn’t much to the ruins as you can see in these
photos. The ‘cuartel de los carabineros’ seems to have been a barracks for an
early version of the Spanish coast guard, set up in 1829. We couldn’t find out
whether the sea had always been this close or not, nor when the buildings were
last used, but the sea is clearly working away to reduce what little is left.
Enjoying our walk
nonetheless under a clear blue sky and with an onshore breeze to assist our
return, we made our way back to the hamlet of Torre la Sal to see if we could
get a bite to eat at the restaurant that looks out over the beach. Our luck was
in and after the special ‘weekend menu’ (as it was a festival day) was offered,
we tucked in to lamb stew/salad starters followed by steak and sauce/ salt cod
and mash – both, unusually in Spain, with veg! Washed down with a pitcher of
wine/beer and topped off by dessert (all for €12 each), we waddled our way back
to the site to have a snooze in the last of the afternoon sun, knowing that we
would be heading off to la belle France in the morning…
S.
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