Children of the MoHolution

Sunday 11th January 2015

Sunday morning is often greeted in by playing Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ (can’t think why!).

Munching on my Sunday morning BLT accompanied by multiple coffees fails to get me past a line in the song that goes ‘It’s just the wasted years so close behind’.

The rest of that song, to me,  is a sound from way back that goes well with sleepy-starts to Sunday mornings but that line has laid increasingly more guilt on me as the years have gone by!

I want a re-write and a new version released without that ‘downer’ line in it – Bring back Lou!

It would take more than a few coffees to burn that line out of my head but I’m nothing if not a pragmatist, one that can shake off downers by hastily replacing them with objective-driven thoughts, and, just by surveying our surroundings, of MoHo’s, a neat Aire and a blazing sun and all that this combination represents, I’m already on the ‘up’!

So ‘let’s get on with the show’ ………

I decided to to take a few pictures of some of those on-site MoHo’s:

On the terrace below us is a couple of Concorde MoHo’s – quite a few of these here – with a few bits added, you’re going to have to fork out around €200K for one of these

Our immediate neighbour had to move to the very edge of his pitch boundary with Twernt  – all due to a ‘newcomer’ pitching next to him and blocking his light (& sun)……..

… and here’s the ‘newcomer’, why, it’s another of those Morelo’s! – these puppies are TALL and, with extras, they cost around €300K-€350K

MAN Euro VI-chassis, PhoeniX Alcove Maxi-Liner – €300K-€400k, depending on spec – they weigh about 8 Tonnes and have a payload of almost 4 Tonnes – I’d give the shirt off of my back to have one of these!

After photographing and checking out a few of the on-site MoHo’s, my spirit was deflated and that song line ‘It’s just the wasted years so close behind’ kept repeating itself in my head,

A little deflated and in need of a new focus, I traipsed back to Twernt.

Luckily, Beth, Nathaniel and their boys (A Major Break) had arrived on site yesterday, so a good day was in prospect.

We had arranged to take ourselves off to check-out Vera Playa.

With our 6 cycles assembled, we set off using the excellent cycle-paths.

Tom entertained with his stunt riding skills – he is Mr. Stunt-Meister!

Our first sighting of the Vera Playa and it was a tad disappointing.

None of the restaurants/cafes appeared to be open and the beach front has the appearance of neglect, this may be due to the fact that it’s now off-season but the masses of apartments for sale at ‘giveaway’ prices add to the feeling of this being a resort in decline – a big shame because all aspects of the resort look to be ‘ready-to-go’ – probably just needs more punters (visitors and residents) to bring in more spondulicks for the area to qualify for a higher level of maintenance/improvement – it could  be a real ‘go-er’ with the established infrastructure having been well thought out and already in-place (cycle paths, etc.).

If Spanish property prices are depressed, I would expect an area like this to ‘blossom’ quite quickly once an upturn appears (if it ever does!).

And then, strolling along the beach, we saw what, for me, could only be the owner of that PhoeniX MoHo ……….

Could this be the owner of that PhoeniX ‘MAN’ MoHo? If so, it looks like you need to give more than the shirt off of your back to get one of those MoHo’s – Going to have to re-think my plan! – maybe not.

There was evidence that this beach might have a leisure purpose that none of us subscribed to:

This either translates to ‘Naked people frequent this area’ or the multitude of naked people (mostly guys) meant that there was another Aire close-by that was full of PhoeniX/MAN MoHo’s

We retired to the only beachside bar/restaurant that was open, initially opting for seating at the side of the establishment – in order to preserve child innocence.

Sadly this side of the bar/restaurant was in the shade but some of the occupants – who were sipping their teas and coffees – seated in the sunnier area were stark-b%££%$* naked; if those teas/coffees are piping hot they are in trouble! They’re pretty much all older than me (perish that thought before you start!) and I’ve had a few times when my <piping hot> coffee has escaped with gravitational predictability!

Beth & Nathaniel are tutoring Alfie (aged 12 years) and Tom (aged 7 years) during their ‘Major Break’ and their curriculum hasn’t yet included sex education – as proved by Tom, who asked his Dad, during cycling down to the beach, “How do you make babies?”.

Clearly not a question that Nathaniel was expecting, he replied ‘Ask your Mum later Tom” – shame – I thought both Tom and I were about to learn something that has always bothered me.

Nathaniel, Beth and Amanda settled for coffees/teas – I like my coffee hot and if this establishment served hot drinks those naked customers they could be in real trouble, so I figured that the hot drinks were only really luke-warm,

I ordered a beer – I needed something to dull the visions now appearing everywhere around us – not a pretty sight.

Beth, however, was able to describe in detail the pieces of jewellry that were dangling from male dangly bits – Good spot Beth, the rest of us hadn’t noticed that!

It may well be that these guys were impoverished beach sellers and this was the only place that they had to carry their stock – if you’re into lip piercing don’t buy any lip jewellery from them though – that’s my advice.

Alfie, Britain’s next comedian GREAT, wasn’t impressed, he turned his back on these ‘Dangle-Dongle City’ dwellers and concentrated on checking out how his share portfolio was performing.

We ordered some ‘pub-grub’ and had to make a decision to stay at our ‘shady’ seating area or move around the corner to the sunny side of the bar/restaurant.

An area where, for us, ‘people watching’ would be forcibly replaced with ‘people’s willy watching’.

“Hey, is that Dick Tracey?”

“Nah, looks more like Nobby Stiles”.

“What about him – Is that Dick Brown?”.

“Nah, it’s just sunburnt”.

Shady-side or Sunny-side-with-risks?

Sunny won.

At least by this time all of us adults had ‘wised-up’ and switched to beers.

The lads sat with their backs to the parading menagerie of nakedness that are yet to achieve their ambition of becoming the subjects of a David Attenborough.’Special’.

David Attenborough (related to Amanda and to Steve S!) once said “The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?”.

I somehow don’t think that these were the elephants that he was referring to.- unless he meant really tiny elephants with really tiny trunks!

What about the naked waiters and waitresses, I hear you ask? – Good question …  the answer is there weren’t any.

Burger and Chips! A rare/non-existent menu option in some of the places that we’ve visited so far in Portugal and Spain. Are Beth & Nathaniel donning their shades to block out the ‘visions’ around us or to get a better view? Should have brought my own shades along … on second thoughts … good move!

The opportunity did  exist to surreptitiously take pictures of jewellery-adorned-willies (one), belly-overhang-hidden-willies (the rest) and female ‘visions’ that would have Rubens leaping out from the grave with paintbrush in hand to capture on canvas

Meanwhile Nathaniel was labouring away to fix a number of punctures found in Tom’s rear cycle tyre.

Nathaniel could only find two of what must have been at least three punctures in the tyre – yet again, small pricks on this beach had caused us some problems – the tyre wasn’t going to be fixed here so Tom couldn’t ride his bike back to our camping. The DoggyRide trailer top provided a solution to transport Tom’s bike on our return ride.

Bike-less Tom ran the mile or so back. Tom has energy. Tom is 7.

He even side-tracked his run back to swerve over into a road-side park, climb all over the ‘monkey-bars’ and then swerve back to our group. Stunt man, monkey-bar expert and energy junkie, that’s Tom!

2 bikes, one Doggy-Ride trailer complete with 2 dogs – a picture taken by Amanda, whilst carrying a handbag – containing my very heavy wallet – I’m grateful for small mercies – at least I think I am

Some MoHo’s were parked on the road-side as we left the playa and they included a ‘G’ reg old Hymer – I am now wondering if that could be a certain J & J from a certain forum who I know are naturist lovers and that they are also somewhere down in this area.

If that was you J & J, I do apologise for not recognising you – in your avatar you are fully clothed.

If I’d known that you might be here, I would have checked out more faces on the beach, can’t think why I didn’t really – anyway, if it was you, nice to see you!

Once we got back to Twernt we discovered that the previously fast WiFi was now loitering somewhere between non-existent and a speed that measured in bytes per second only!!! (Usually measured in MBps, sometimes, if you’re unlucky they can drop down to a KBps measurement but Bps!!!). ‘Limited’ connection often indicates that you didn’t get an IP address issued but in this case we did so it was just a trashed WiFi service.

From the land of WiFi aplenty to the land of WiFi SFA – and it stayed this way until we left 36 hours or so later.

After dinner, Beth, Nathaniel, Alfie and Tom came over to Twernt and we shared a few beers and vino’s – right now the ‘Major Break’ crew are creating a time that they will hopefully never look back on as being ‘the wasted years so close behind’ – Life is good!

Beth & Nathaniel invited us over the next afternoon for a game of Boules/Pétanque.

Monday 12th January 2015

The site WiFi is still lousy, I suspect that those Morelo MoHo’s come complete with a site-zapping piece of software detrimental to all other site WiFi users.

You Morelo owners are under observation – be warned.

On with more important matters – Boules/Pétanque – I have never played the game and I now understand that one is a derivative of the other.

From my brief ‘speed-read’ of both versions on Wiki, the game of Boules involves a run-up to the ‘oche’ whereas Pétanque requires that you stand at the ‘oche’, feet together and do not move.

The only game that I’ve played that involves holding a ball is cricket but I’m guessing that bouncers, beamers, googlies, spinners, etc. aren’t going to be of much use to me here – might be fun trying though and imagine the craters I could create in these manicured Boules/Pétanque courts!

Better still, whack those large silver balls and try to get them to explode – even better, lets load them with enough explosives to create a ‘bang’ that will shut those constantly barking camp dogs up! We’re onto something here, Timothy…….

For anyone interested in discovering the history and differences between Boules and  Pétanque, these Wiki pages may help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boules

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9tanque

Beth starts the game off – I’m relegated to umpire and camera duties (not enough ball sets for all) – check out that look of concentration on Nathaniels face – you just know that he’s going to be good at this game – and he was!

Amanda at the ‘oche’ and a look of sheer relief on Nathaniels face as the ball goes in a direction other than his – hey! – the ball, mid-flight, is in this picture! – exciting or what?

This is Petra, from Germany, who, with her son, David, is on a sabbatical helping David to recouperate from a serious back injury . Beth & Nathaniel had earlier supplied lunch during which we all nattered away – my impression was that Petra, a lovely lady, either has a scientific background or a keen interest in matters relating to GM crops – thank you Petra, wisdom spread amongst fellow MoHo’ers is invaluable – for casual readers, believe me, GM foods are bad shit and if you don’t believe me I’ll send Petra around to have a word in your shell-like. The game stance held by Petra is probably the correct one – if this game leads to a penalty shoot-out there will be only one winner – Petra ………from Germany!

Nathaniel, what can I say, however he’s doing this, it’s the way to do it! Nathaniel won more games than the 3 ladies, not just a few more but a few more than that. In the background is the ‘Major Break’ MoHo conversion. .

Nathaniel converted their van especially for this ‘Major Break’ – and it’s loaded!

Wet room/toilet, twin bunks, large kitchen with a close-to-Twernt-sized worktop, a double bed at the front (once converted from seating) and masses of storage.

The storage includes learning aids for the Monday to Friday classroom duties that Beth and Nathaniel deliver to provide a ‘standard+’ curriculum to the lads.

Alfie and Tom are ‘live’ learning geography, social skills and more – in a way that a ‘standard’ curriculum couldn’t hope to deliver.

Way to go!

Children of the Revolution MoHolution!!

The four contestants being admired by some onlookers – either that or the lady in red is coming over to sign Nathaniel up for the Spanish Olympic Pétanque Team

Petra and Beth had won three games each (to Nathaniels more than 6 wins!), Amanda decided that I might be able to break the Twernt team duck.

Not much chance of that!

I’ve never played this game before (really!).

Amanda took over dog and camera duties and my first-ever throw in a game of Pétanque gave her this picture ……

Shoot! that must have been beginners luck! but the 2nd ball also landed on these two by some miracle and I did manage to get 3 wins before my arm got tired and Nathaniel once again took over in the winning stakes (what do you mean my arm was fine, Nathaniel? – this is my blog and I’m writing the truth here for posterity – you can write all the lies you want in your blog!)

In the background, David and Tom pondered over reasons why the UK should remain as a part of Europe – it’s all about playing with the toys and not about who gets to ‘own’ them – not a problem when you play together this well – so play more, own less is the message from these young Europeans that should put to shame the saddo ‘own more’ brigade.

Alfie demonstrating ‘bruvverly love’ with his bro Tom – Alfie has a wicked sense of humour – he could already outwit my feeble attempts at humour.

The Major Break Crew – Tom, Beth, Alfie and Nathaniel – thanks for the day ‘Major Break’ we had a great time and please pass our best wishes on to Petra and David if they’re still with you.

With a lot to do and not a lot of daylight left, we said our farewells to the ‘Major Break’ crew, really special to have met you all and we somewhere down the line we hope that we’ll get a chance to meet up again – and thanks for the day, really enjoyed it.

That night a knock at Twernt’s door and it was Beth who had freshly cooked these ginger biscuits – whoa! – they were bloody delicious Beth – now we’re going to be watching your blog closely to make sure we ‘happen’ to be wherever you travel to …. yum.

 

Tuesday 13th January 2015

Early to rise and pack up camp from our 5 night stay here.

Oasis al Mar is a lovely site and we will definitely be back to this one – probably for a longer stay.

We didn’t explore the marina area along the costa and we could have enjoyed a lot more cycle riding along the many cycle paths in the area.

I could also have made an x-rated version of ‘Twernt on Tour’ that could have included pictorial evidence backing up Jethro’s claim to what the word ‘Twernt’ really stands for.

As my Mother would have said “You’re a very rude man”.

Sorry Ma, but all of those bible classes were totally lost on me – although perhaps the nonsense helped me to see ‘the truth’ earlier than some. Don’t you sometimes wish that Richard Dawkins had been around much earlier in your life!

Before we left ‘Oasis al Mar’ we went down to say our final farewells to Beth, Nathaniel, Alfie and Tom. As it was still ‘early door’s it was clear that they were still in slumber – ciao guys, thanks again and hope that we see you soon.

Our road to enlightenment on this Tuesday morning in January, we made a few detours en-route to check out a few places – nothing exciting or worth reporting

and the ‘bible’ that helps us to find another ‘Nirvana’ – Note the kilometer converted mph-y-fied speed limit bottom left, next to our actual speed. All of the other gubbins on the screen is useful as well – Travelling North East on the A7 with 79 miles to destination and it’s 13:23 hours – drive 13 miles before the next junction/roundabout/whatever action is required – 13 miles? The cruise is on, feet are rested and I’m taking this picture using both hands – not! (Just one hand – I had a cigarette, a cup of coffee, a magazine and my late lunch in the other!)

The tunnel that runs beneath Lorca Castle – a medieval fortress from circa 9AD to 15AD. Now a site of cultural interest that was of key strategic value to misguided religious groups that fought to occupy it during the middle ages. Let’s all play together and not want to own anything, you’re still going to get there – just more of you

Another road pic

We stopped by some of the golf resorts for a quick look-see

Looking forlorn and desolate but this one has 2 bed apartments selling for an asking price of €29K – that’s about £24,000.00! Not bad, fit a power-shower and use as an occasional ‘bolt-hole’ and then, in 200 years time, once the sun-seekers bring their ‘do-re-mi’ back to Spain, it could be worth more – I’d predict maybe as much as £1000 more – from the ‘feel’ of the area

And rest ………. our destination just outside Cartagena – may ‘hole-up’ here for a while, rent a car and explore around us