Marjal Costa Blanca Post 6

Tuesday 1st  -  Monday 7th January 2019 🌞🌞🌞🌞 🌞🌞🌞-  lovely sunny days but cold frosty nights❄❄❄!!
No Motorhome Miles and hardly any🚴🚴 miles
Parking Co-ordinates 38.18085, -0.8119

Happy New Year Everybody 😙😙😙

In my last post I told how John and I weren't very well as we left 2018 and headed into 2019, but we did actually manage to drink a toast to the Spanish New Year and also watch a couple of firework displays that occurred just after the stroke of midnight.  However, by 1am (when the English New Year occurred we were very firmly in the land of nod💤😴💤!  And from there things went slightly downhill and I was quite poorly with a horrible cold and laryngitis which rendered me completely speechless for 3 days, and even after that, I remained very 🐎 and lethargic with little will to do much more than either indulge in more💤😴💤 or sit in the sunshine recuperating!

So once again I'm slightly lacking in things to talk about but Google offered some interesting facts for 2018!  It seems :-

• We travelled 15,108 miles which is equal to 60% of the distance around the world!
• We walked 448 miles
• We cycled 1,355 miles
• And we visited 8 countries which included the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Spain and of course England!

Quite obviously 'Big Brother' has been watching us quite carefully!!!

Anyway, back at the ranch the very important 5th of January came around very quickly, and this date is of much significance here because in Spain (and in many other countries) it's the Eve of Three Kings Day or the Epiphany or The Festival of the Three Royal Magi.  The Festival celebrates when the Kings or Wise Men brought gifts to Baby Jesus, and Spanish  children anticipate Epiphany much as our children in England anticipate Christmas Eve.  They prepare for it  by writing letters to the 3 Kings on 26th December, and then as night approaches on the 5th the kids put edibles and cognac for the Kings and straw, walnuts and satsumas in their shoes for the camels and these are left by the front door or out on the balcony so that the King's and their camels have refreshments!  In return they expect sweets and small gifts to fill their shoes, and other bigger gifts as well!  But naughty children might get a bit of a shock because like Santa 🎅 the Kings 'know', and all a  bad child might receive are pieces of coal!

So the evening of the 5th saw us trekking of to our local town of Catral to see the 3 Kings Parade, and although it was only a fairly small event it was certainly quite entertaining!  We got there a bit early so to pass the time we nipped into one of the local bars and indulged in a little drop of falling over juice, and even though we've been here in Spain for quite a while now I still can't quite get over how cheap it is to achieve that goal if you so desire.  We were with some friends and I brought 3 large 🍷🍷🍷and a pint of 🍺all for the princely sum of 7 quid!

The parade got under way at about 6.30

And John commented that this gave new meaning to the phrase
'Hung like a Stallion'😂😂

Disney got in on the act!

Along with some clever people on stilts

Pretty Dancing Angels

And of Course the Camels and the Kings

Then after that it was a quick nip back to the site because we'd got tickets for the club house to hear Frances Sing, and later to scoff a sizzling sausage!  It was a really good evening of noise, nattering and dancing with a few of our  rally mates - but I'm not quite sure what our kids would have made of it if they'd seen their 'old fogies ' having so much fun!! 

However, Sunday morning revealed a problem -because following my rendition of Smokie's  'Living Next Door to Alice' - I seemed to have completely been robbed of my voice again😂😂😂 (and I promise I never even used the swear words)

But despite my muteness we had a good day on Sunday because we'd been invited to accompany our friends Gail and Kev to a restaurant in Benijofar for Sunday lunch which proved to be delicious 😂😋!

And that brings us once again back to today (Monday), and as our moving day is tomorrow we've spent it just pottering!  We've tided our pitch and got T4rdis2 ship shape and ready for the road, we've said a temporary goodbye to our many new friends (whom we hope to meet up with again next year), and we've been down to the main site plaza for  our farewell meal. And then just as we were almost ready to leave Gail and Kev turned up for a farewell drink - so 1 bottle of wine turned into 3 and another lovely afternoon was spent in their's and Milly's 🐕 company!

Tomorrow we've got about 160 miles to travel to Moncofa which will be home for the next 6 weeks and we're really looking forward to it, because as we've been there before, there should be lots of familiar faces to keep us company.

See you soon 😙

Click here to see our Spanish Camping spots