A day trip to Garrucha

While on holiday at one of the HPB Spanish properties, El Pueblito de Alfaix, we took a day trip to Garrucha. The grandparents were babysitting that day, so we were officially footloose and fancy free!! 

White, sandy & remote beaches

It's a 20 minute drive from the HPB property through beautiful mountain ranges and well worth the journey (in my humble). We'd heard that Garrucha was a big fishing port and worth a trip to try the local fresh red prawns, although we were warned it was "very touristy".

Well, we went in June and the place was very remote, very quiet and an absolute idyll. The fairly large town has a lovely, long promenade lined with palm trees and dotted with interesting bars and restaurants. And, there was hardly a person on the beach and only a handful of people in the port.

At one end is the port and the other the beach.

The working port of attractive
but not pretty

The port is reasonably attractive, although clearly a working port rather than a pretty marina. And, most of the bars and restaurants seem to be overlooking the port.

However, towards the beautiful beach is where Garrucha truly comes into its own. The long, wide, sandy beach is located on the harbour and the water is very calm due to the break water. We'd been to Playa Agua de Amarga the previous day, which was very beautiful but the water was quite choppy.

My view from lunch. Not
a person in sight!

And the best bit? The beach was practically deserted. 2km of promenade and golden, sandy beach with barely a sole on it. Apparently it is the only beach in Europe with a blue flag in town beach. The water is azure blue and the sand seems to stretch on forever. 

There was a huge amount of choice of bars and restaurants. We chose to stop in one at the end of the port, over looking the beach. When we sat down, we were the only people in the place. Touristy? I don't think so.

Our De Alberto white wine
with a very intriguing cork!

The restaurant, Chiringuito El Jardin de la Paella had a few plastic chairs outside and, although pretty, was certainly not chic dining. However, the service was prompt and friendly and we had a delicious meal of "raciones" which is sort of like a large serving of Tapas. We had a large plate of calamaris, some mussels in tomato sauce and some garlicky swordfish. 

To round it off, the waiter recommended a bottle of white wine that was very scrummy. Interestingly, nearly all the restaurants we visited in the area only offered Spanish Wines. Can you imagine a restaurant in England only offering English wines? The Guti Verdejo from de Alberto wines that he recommended was crisp and dry and went perfectly with our seafood platter. It also had a white, plastic cork which I found very delightful.

Overall, we had a lovely day trip to Garrucha. It wasn't over crowded and had a natural and remote feel to it, but with a great mix of bars and restaurants. We found during our stay to Almeria that the wind picks up as the day goes on and, certainly in Garrucha we noticed that after lunch it got very blowy. And, further down the beach it appeared that the sand was being blown up the beach a little. So perhaps more suitable to the mornings. 

Using gNappies on holiday with a toddler

Last year, I wrote a blog post about using gNappies on holiday with a baby. We recently went to Spain, and since our little one is nearly 2, I thought I would write an update on how I found using gNappies abroad with a toddler.

We still use cloth nappies at home. But we would find it very difficult to use them on holiday due to the amount of space they would take up in the luggage, as well as storing wet nappies and washing them. So for us, gNappies are the next best thing. 

My gNappies drying in the sunshine!

Although they are not completely reusable, the outer "pant" part of the nappy is made from cotton and washable, so softer and more natural against his skin. And the disposable insert is 100% biodegradable and apparently decomposes within 50-100 days. Plus they look super cute :) 

I was concerned that we might have issues with leakage as my son drinks a lot of water and, well, it has to come out somewhere! However, we did not have a problem at all. He was pretty much dry the whole week and didn't have any issues with nappy rash or soreness.

Another great thing with gNappies is that they do up at the back (unless your husband puts them on an forgets, frequently). This means that, if you have a toddler who is prone to taking off their own nappy it's much more difficult for them to undo the Velcro tabs because they are round the back. So, in hot weather, you can have them running around in just their nappy without having to worry about it flying off.

gNappies are perfect for
toddlers that undo nappies-
fastening at the back!

We had three of the gNappies nappy covers (Good Fortune Red, Guppy Green and Gigabyte Blue) with us and a 32 pack of the disposable inserts. This easily lasted us the week with us doing a wash every other day (which we would have done anyway with our messy toddler!).

All in all, I'm a big fan of gNappies. They look really cute and, although not completely reusable, I think they are a good eco alternative for holidays. Especially if you consider that disposable nappies take 500 years to degrade in landfill and we'd have probably used 30 of them in a week which is a horrid thought.

Ps I wrote this on 16th June and they have a special offer on gNappies until 20th June, with 20% off all purchases. Use the code SUNNYSUMMER apparently.