Day 39: Mojacar to Cartagena

March 28, 2025

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It seems I had given the hotel Continental a bad rap over breakfast last time, or perhaps they have improved their offering. This time it was just fine. Consequently they got a 10 rating from us on Booking, because everything else was really nice.

With the good hotel stay, we set off well rested and in good order, on what was planned as a rather long haul to Cartagena. Nothing awful or all that tiring happened during the day, but we found ourselves negotiating some tight town centres and a normal complement of road closures. With our rather boat-like Peugeot 408, it wasn't totally easy.

Dodie called me out today for branding cyclists a "nuisance". The general reason is that to give them 1 1/2 meters of clearance, I prefer to cross the centre line a bit, and that means waiting for a clear spot. Some cyclists make it tougher, by riding double, or riding in the lane. And those electric scooters are both fast and wobbly. They cost me extra vigilance.

The Mojacar area continues flat, and much developed, until I might say after Aguilas.

Beaches and hotels, followed by harbours and apartments.

I characterized the Peugeot 408 as a "boat" because it is really long, compared to most cars hereabouts. We needed that to hold the bikes, but there are some parking spaces we can not get in to, turning from the typically narrow roadways. Despite this, the fuel economy has been remarkable, running at least 40 mpg Canadian (7 litres/100km; 35 mpg US). That's not insanely good, but still it cost us just 45 euros to get from Granada to Mojacar - about 400 km. The price of gas is 1.58 euros/litre. That's over $US 6 per US gallon, or $CAN 2.35/l. Those are very high prices, for Canada and the US.

One thing I liked, at the Repsol station, came because I wanted to pay cash. At home, since they no longer trust anyone, to do this you have to go into the station and either leave a pile of cash before going to fill up, or actually pay for an amount of gas, fill up, and come back in for a refund. I assumed it would go something like that, but the attendant gave me to understand that I should go fill up, then come in and we'd deal with it. It used to be like that in North America about 20 years ago. I first ran into "pay before you pump" in Florida, I think. I thought then that the Americans were untrusting folks. But the practice rapidly spread to Canada as well.

The way to Aguilas continued without many traumatic hills.

Dodie snapped this because it looked like it might be something special, but we don't know what!

Here is a bit of hill. It's complete with cyclists clogging up MY road.

In France, we have complete disdain for the routes barreés, but here we have less courage. Partly its because it's hard to back out of things with a car involved, and you certainly can't slightly pull down a barrier and squeeze by. In this case, we went around the sign, but a km down the road, when the warning was repeated, we chickened out.

The detour took us somewhat into the hills.

Approaching Aguilas, here is a nice separated bike lane.

Even though we are growing allergic to taking the car into crowded city centres, we were lured to the harbour of Aguilas by that birding site, that claimed there was good birding from the long pier at the harbour. So we went into the town, and parked in the quite large harbour parking area.

We have been trying to take care to park our quite long and wide car as straight as possible. Often we will send Dodie out to guide a straightening out. But I was surprised to find her giving instructions to a lady that parked beside us. I was preparing to be a bit embarrassed about this, but then I looked at the lady's car. It was still half in the roadway, and totally crooked. The lady acknowledged this and moved it, thanking us for the tip. So possible embarrassment turned into a fun interaction with someone else.

The pier begins at this lighthouse and fortress.

It turned out that the pier was only a birding hotspot for gulls, attracted by the fish boats. But it was fun looking at the gulls, and also the fishing activity.

This is probably a juvenile Yellow Legged Gull

This rather ugly statue is half way along the pier.

Some of the bits that comprise the statue are nice enough.

A place of honour is reserved in Aguilas for a Renfe train. Not that this one will take our bikes either!

Outside Aguilas, we briefly enjoyed looking at farmland, and workers doing planting:

But we quickly came to this situation. The sign says the road is cut, but here comes a truck from down there. Again we decided not to gamble, and quickly ended up on the Autopista.

I was glad of the car, because not only are bikes not allowed on the autopista, but there are tunnels, like this one.

For a brief time we booted along on the road like this.

We took an exit as soon as possible, ending up paying one euro in toll. Soon we were in Puerto de Mazarron. Puerto de Mazarron is a bit famous with us, because it is the spot where we would have popped out of the interior, had we chosen an interior way from Granada on the bikes. As it happens, we got tangled up in Puerto de Mazarron, spinning around a few times before finding a way to escape.

Some kind of Grampie trap: Puerto de Mazarron

The next feature of interest is a small, or not so small, mountain complex, called Parque Regional Sierra de la Muella.

It took some climbing to get to the top.

There is a great view of the valley below.

There were lots of olive trees and agriculture to see once we got down there.

Any enjoyment of idyllic agriculture ended as we reached Cartagena. In rejigging our bookings to take account of travelling with the car, Dodie targeted not the old city centres but the previously despised hotels on the big car roads. At least that was the idea, but the NH Hotel in Cartagena, while not in the centre, was still in a place of challenging traffic, making it hard to reach.

Here is our track trying to draw up to the NH hotel:

Are we as gormless as it looks? Not really, it's just the effect of active traffic and a strange city.

We are keeping a keen eye on what comes next!

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Scott ReynoldsHello Steve and Dodie!
This is Scott. We met last year outside the bike shop in Orleans I think it was. You were impressed with how trusting we were leaving our bikes parked while we walked around as I recall.
We are heading on another cycling adventure, and I would like to hear your advice! This 10 day trip is Regensburg to Vienna along the Danube. We will be joined by our son and daughter in law, and their 2 toddlers (2 and 4 yrs old - alternating from trailer to "shotgun seats"). Have you done this route? Any suggestions for sights to see? We will be limiting our days to 50-60k and camping. The 2nd half of our journey (just me and my brother), will be 2 weeks riding Salzburg to the Adriatic. Do you have any suggested routes here?
Thanks so much and great to see you continue to cycle the world!
Scott
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