This time we can play golf……….

We had planned 2 trips to look for property on the basis that we would buy the first trip if we really found somewhere we wanted but if we didn’t we always had the November trip. Now that we had decided on the house in San Juan de los Terreros, the November trip became a golf weekend. We flew out on the Friday night to San Javier airport and were booked into a hotel in Los Alcazares, that looked really good value and had on-site parking, which was important to us as we had the golf clubs to carry to the car, but had an odd name for a hotel, 525. We arrived late to find the car parking was secure underground parking, a good start. We took the lift up to reception and walked out into a beautiful marble floored reception. We checked in and went up to our room on the 3rd floor which had 2 balconies. It was still quite warm even though it was late at night so we went out onto the balcony to have a look around and to see if we were close to anywhere that we could get a drink. Neil recognised the square outside as the one we had sat and had lunch in on our 2nd day of the inspection trip, which meant we were near to the fish restaurant. This wasn’t planned when I booked the hotel but we had definite plans to check out dinner there on the following night. But tonight, we wandered further down from the square and found an Irish bar that was open and enjoyed a couple of drinks in there.

We had planned to play 2 rounds of golf, one on Saturday morning and one on Sunday. Both were in Murcia, but we did plan to travel down to San Juan de los Terreros to have a look at the development, take a few photos and to drive around the area again.

On the Saturday, we played La Torre. It’s a Jack Nicklaus designed course with a lot of sand. A par 5 where I was in the bunker from the tee, took a good 2nd shot and ended up in another bunker, took a good 3rd shot and ended up in a green side bunker – this is hard work. The course does not allow buggies on the fairways so you have to stick to the path, and carry a selection of clubs across to wherever your ball ends up. I took 3 clubs with me, my sand wedge to get out of the bunker, my chipper as I only expected to get onto the fringe as the bunker was quite deep and my putter. I dropped 2 clubs at the edge of the green and walked round and into the bunker, looked down at my club and discovered I had got my chipper in the bunker with me, not my wedge – I really couldn’t be bothered to climb out of the bunker and walk back so I just wacked it with my chipper. It came out of the bunker and landed 3 foot from the pin, and I knocked it in for a par. It was a tough course, but there was the odd hole where it just went right.

We left La Torre mid-afternoon and decided to call at the fish restaurant (one of these days I’ll find out what it is called) on the way back to book a table for that evening. When we got there it was closed but due to open at 6.00pm, that was ok, it was walking distance from the hotel and we had time to have a leisurely shower, and relax before coming back and trying for the 3rd time, surely it was 3rd time lucky!