Battled my way back through the city of Murcia and was relieved to get onto the motorway to my next destination which was to be in a nature park.
However this was not to be!
Feeling tired I stopped to have a coffee from the flask in a designated picnic area. It was too hot to sit outside so I sat inside the van and I left the door open to prevent the sun blazing through the window.
A car suddenly drew up alongside and a Muslim fellow got out with a map and leant across the driver seat pretending to ask the way. I thought it was odd and then realised what he was doing. He was scrabbling around underneath the map for my bag. I said 'No, I know what you are doing'. Then he found my handbag and ran to their car. In the bag was €300 and my credit and debit cards. Unfortunately I had put extra money in my purse when I thought I might go to Ibiza. Fortunately my passport was elsewhere. You always have to show it at campsites so it could easily have been in the bag also. The thieves were two men and one woman. I got the number of the car 3336HVM which was a nice new car. Telephoned the emergency service who fobbed me off to go to the Guardia Civil in the next town of Totana only after we had spent an age in the hot sun trying to establish where I was.
At Totana it was difficult to find the Guardia civil and parking. That turned out to be a waste of time. They just told me to go to Nacional Civil in Malaga to fob me off.
I felt quite sick with shock. I carried on driving and stopped at a restaurant/bar and asked if they had wifi. They said yes but they didn't have it. I needed to put a stop to the bank cards and sent a text to my son to try to inform the banks.
Rather than stop at the intended campsite I drove about 400kms to Marbella to hashing friends Seonaid and Eric (aka Big b**** and Hash Cash).
They were a great help to me in letting me use Skype to make the necessary calls. I have to say that Visa and HSBC were particularly time consuming and awkward. After ages on the phone, an emergency card was declined and any way it would have only been able to be used for car hire, hotel or airline tickets, which was no use to me.
They offered to send emergency cash via Western Union which I accepted. I asked for £1000 to be sent which won't see me through for the next month but I don't want to carry too much cash. The arrogant man on the phone told me categorically not to use to the post office but when Seonaid drove me to the nearest western union office I was told that you could only receive money in Spain at the western union in a post office. So we found the post office and I eventually got the money. It was not easy and it would have all been even more complicated had I not been able to stay in Eric and Seonaid beautiful villa.