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One of the typical drawbacks of living or staying in a closed community is the lack of shopping facilities, but in Hacienda Riquelme Golf Resort there is a small supermarket open all day in the Casón, at the centre of the resort, selling typical foodstuffs at not unreasonable prices, and the town of Sucina is just a five-minute drive down the road. Avileses and Balsicas are slightly further, but also easily accessible.

 

 

All three towns are small, but Sucina has a couple of supermarkets and it won’t be hard to fill your fridge here. Further shops are available in Torre Pacheco, which has everything 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.

 

Los Alcázares, twenty minutes down the road on the coast of the Mar Menor, is far more international, 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.

 

A 15-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 Parque Mediterraneo complex in Cartagena is only a twenty-minute drive away: apart from numerous clothes stores it includes a large supermarket, a Media Markt, Decathlon for sporting goods, Toys ‘R’ Us and Leroy Merlin. It is easily found on the external ringroad driving in from the Mar Menor and has plenty of parking as well as fast food.

 

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 or the excellent British butchers in Los Belones.

 

Slightly further afield (30 minutes by car) 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.

 

A list of English speaking local suppliers, services and businesses can be found in the Business Directory on Hacienda Riquelme Today.