Cartagena, then drive… (18/11)

 After my decision to head home I also decided that Cartagena, one of the stop offs id highlighted before leaving for this trip, was only 20 mins away, so head there before my drive to Santander for the ferry.

What a top decision that was, i loved the place.  Amazing buildings dating back 1000s of years, the old town was quite incredible.

I went to the Castle first.  After a pretty cool walk up steep paving and various, mainly hidden, steps I got to the top, that in itself offered amazing views.  Went to pay and bonus, it’s free entry.

On my way up, the tower id take a few photos of and over the city

Did the usual and walked about a bit, thankfully the info boards were also in English so could have a read.  Then I followed a very narrow and steep staircase up to the top.  Quite amazing views.

The fort with mountains in the background

After a bit more reading about the history of the castle I decided to head to the old town, 

Giz a kiss

The old town was everything you would expect in this region, a mix of Middle Eastern, Roman and Greek architecture.  However I wwas on a tight schedule and wanted to visit the fort…

A normal every day occurrence….

I drove over to the fort, this was a bit of an experience.  Very tight roads/streets and it seemed to be a little bit more “dodgy” than some of the other places Id been.  I had to drive very slowly due to how tight the roads were and lots of vehicles parked up.  While doing this I could at least take in some of the grandeur of the outer fort walls. 

As I searched, twice in the space of a few minutes I wa approached by “friendly ladies’ who I am sure were just offering to give me a tour, a tour of what though 😳.  I decided it was time to leave, the fort was about to close anyway.

Then the drive

I headed towards Madrid, I decided id at least have a short stop off there, as id never been before.  On the way I watched the sunset over mountains, that was pretty cool. What I also watched was the temperature drop.  When I left Cartagena at roughly 7:30pm it was 17 degrees, after about 5 hour it was hitting -2, brrrrr 🥶 

Id had one stop off, watched the end of the Scotland game, that was fun 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 then off to Madrid.  I was trying to find a parking space that looked safe.  Nope, and with my van having UK plates I kinda stood out so decided to move on, hey ho, maybe next time a longer daytime visit to Madrid would be good.

I was getting sleepy, so decided to find a HGV stop off, as they are generally safer, then crashed out for about an hour.  By this time it was about 3am so a new day….