El Tranquilo

Liked: El Tranquilo I was drawn to this site by the name, the images and the glowing description and testimonials. We are motorhomers who spend well over 90% of our touring time wild or free parking. This is how we choose to spend our time finding out local customs and ways of life. This year we decided for the first time ever, to spend a full month in one place. The friendly welcome mentioned in other posts is there, and the introductory talk is pretty comprehensive. There is indeed a shuttle bus into Pinoso which is around three miles away. It leaves the site at ten am, and returns for you at twelve. Monday, Wednesday & Friday, or possibly Saturday. €3.50 per pitch. The swimming pool is unheated, in fact we were told it was eight degrees C, during our stay. Meals must be ordered by 16:00 on the day you want to eat, this didn’t suit us, because we like to peruse the menu and have a drink before deciding what we actually want to eat. The bar is open nightly, in winter, from 18:00 to 20:00. We went twice shortly after 19:00 only to find it shut. Carolina explained this is what the Spanish do, if there are no customers they just close up. Fifty years of working in the catering industry, not only in the UK, and never encountered this. Still, this is not the UK. Carolina told us the internet was new and state of the art so we paid €24 for one month. The speeds were so bad I took to recording them via an app on my laptop, in fact, the speeds were so low, my laptop constantly jumped from the paid version to my own personal wifi via data on my phone. When I pointed this out to Caroline, she suggested I turn my phone off! I asked on the local Pinoso Facebook page what the Connecta-3 service was like locally and each reply was positive, so I think management need to investigate how the strength of signal is so poor on a site only a little more than a third full. Caroline and Terry are very warm, and they will happily help you and give any info you ask for, if it’s in their knowledge. I found them affable, but like to keep the customers at arms length. Most of the time if there is an issue, it’s never their fault and mostly it isn’t. Like the three times in our first eleven days the water was off because of roadworks wrecking a mains pipe. Mind you, Terry fetched water in eight litre bottles from the swimming pool to alleviate the problem of no water in the sanitary building. The internet, or lack thereof will always be an abiding issue with me. New Years Eve! It was posted the bar would be open from 20:00 until 01:00. Got dressed up ready to celebrate leaving an awful year behind, got to the bar and it was cancelled. Disappointed is not strong enough, if this had been me, I would have called at each pitch and explained the situation earlier in the day. I am however very glad we chose El Tranquilo to be our first ever long stay, it showed us the difference between motor homing and caravanning. The location sort of denied us the ability to roam, to learn, and explore, in the way we like, which is very necessary for us to enjoy a long trip. This location was a bit too remote for us.

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