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Located next to the clubhouse on El Valle Golf Resort is a small SPAR supermarket, where food and other everyday items can be bought at not unreasonable prices. Opening times are 9am to 8pm from Monday to Saturday and 9am to 2pm on Sundays.

 

The nearest sizeable village is Los Martínez del Puerto, but for a full town shopping trip it is better to head for Torre Pacheco, 20 minutes’ drive south-east. Here there are all the shops one might expect to find in a typical medium-sized town. Don’t expect to find superstores or top-of-the-range brand names, but for everyday necessities it is perfectly adequate, and there are also a number of hardware stores and services such as lawyers, medical services, dentists, etc.

 

The coastal town of Los Alcázares is far more international and is not much further to drive, and the Oasis centre and Avenida Río Nalón are complete with a large number of British-style establishments, both shops and restaurants.

 

Weekly market days are Tuesday in Los Alcázares, Thursday in San Javier and Saturday in Los Narejos and Torre Pacheco, and there are also a host of markets in the municipality of Murcia: click for more information regarding the weekly markets in central Murcia.

 

A 20-minute drive away between San Pedro del Pinatar and San Javier is the Dos Mares shopping centre, which includes a cinema as well as a variety of stores and restaurants.

 

The Espacio Mediterráneo complex in Cartagena is only a twenty-five-minute drive away: apart from numerous clothes stores it includes a large supermarket, a Media Markt, Toys ‘R’ Us and Leroy Merlin. Those who enjoy their shopping in a more traditional environment can also visit Cartagena’s old city centre, where the pedestrian streets are full of colourful small shops, some traditional and some part of large international franchises, interspersed with bars and restaurants. The largest department store in the city is El Corte Inglés, which is located about a mile north of the Town Hall.

 

Those hankering for British food can also nip up to the Iceland supermarket in San Javier and there is an excellent English butcher in Los Belones, Missing Links (see Business Directory for more local suppliers of goods and services).

 

Heading north just 15 minutes is the regional capital of Murcia, where the city centre is a shopper’s paradise, combining major chain stores with smaller traditional establishments in the central pedestrian streets, such as Platería and Trapería. The city centre is a maze of small streets clustered around the major thoroughfare of the Gran Vía, and the temptations to stop and have a coffee or a bite to eat in the myriad squares and terraces are hard to resist! In Murcia El Corte Inglés is just off the northern end of the Gran Vía, where it merges with Avenida Libertad.

 

Outside the centre to the north are the city’s two major out-of-town shopping centres, Thader and Nueva Condomina. Those who enjoy clothes shops will be in seventh heaven here, and among all the establishments touting their wares there are also numerous eateries. Outside the main concourses are other larger superstores, including Ikea, Media Markt, Leroy Merlin and Porcelanosa, where the number of foreign visitors normally ensures that sales staff are able to communicate in English.