Millionaires, Nudists, and roads to Nowhere (Vera)

23^rd November 2013

We are on a nice Aire in a town called Vera. It is Spain’s equivalent of a town called Alice. 

Alice Springs is in the middle of nowhere, dry and barren Australia. Vera, Andalucia, is in the middle of Spain’s Costa Blanca, dry and barren. Maybe its called the Costa Blanca because of all the white English people who live here. In a thousand apartments, all the same. 

And lovely new roads that go nowhere, but have four lanes and no traffic.  So here's a rhyme:

Where do Spanish roads go?

Not on the map, do they lead to the port?

Town planners just didn’t say no,

Nor report where they oughta go.

They talked, and they thought

Did we ever support?

The law that says folk oughta know.

The road that our site is on has been blocked off, just to emphasis that the van site is the last place that you might actually want to get to on this road. So it really does go nowhere else.

So we have come to the end of the road, at the end of Spain, in a town called Vera. You might therefore expect that there are no people here. Oh but there are; they have all come with us to the pub called PUB MILLIONAIRE, on the road facing the beach at Vera Playa. 

And they are all English. And no millionaires. (Maybe they all wanna be billionaires so frickin’ bad?) And the waiter who is Spanish, speaks perfect English, without an accent. And he knows what everyone wants to drink before they ask. Except for us of course. And why are all the English here today in the Millionaire’s bar? Well there is a football match, it being Saturday.  Everton vs Liverpool. And there is rugby league; England vs New Zealand. So there are four large TV screens on, with both the football and the rugby. A choice of where to sit and who to cheer for. 

We sit outside in the sun and eat our meal. We have a great fish and chips and mushy peas meal, and four beers and a pudding called “toffee lumpy bumpy”, and two coffees. And it comes to €2, or something like that, service charge included. It is no wonder all the English are here, and none of them need to be millionaires.

I like the sun, and lie down on a bench and doze off the effects of the beer while Carol walks off down the promenade to have a look at the yachts and the lagoon.

Afterwards we walk down to the beach, to the nudist beach. Sure enough, a couple dressed in coats strip off and walk naked into the sea, (they must be German) and there are a few naked folk sitting in the “naturist bar” having coffee. It is about 19’ in the sun at the most. Maybe 16-17’ in the shade, no wind. But we kept our clothes on. (We are British, you see)

Today we talked about how we should get back to England, and when. We have discussed leaving the van here, maybe at Malaga, where it can be stored for €50 a month, while we fly back for €70 each, for graduation and Christmas, and then come back. Except that I am not all that enamoured with Spain. So the alternative is to head north to Santander or Bilbao and catch the ferry home. That will save us the expense on diesel and tolls in France and works out cheaper than driving.

We are thinking about 3rd of Dec to sail, arriving 4th, from Bilbao to Portsmouth.