Roughly, what day is it?

Well, a lot has happened since my last offering, I wrote this the other night so you can read it while I get my breath back!

Day 31.

Or, where the hell have the past twenty odd days gone?

In truth, there are three very good reasons why I’ve been so remiss, and I’ll tell you.

When I first started off in the WWW world, most people had 56k modems, they were ridiculously slow in todays terms, but it’s all there was, and we never queried it. In fact, if you were on the internet you waited until six pm because it was only a penny per minute, and, the phone couldn’t be used because it was needed by the internet server.

That’s what it feels like in southern Spain nowadays.

During the day, there’s so much to see and do, there’s no time to even save to Word.

Finally during the evening  I’m wrecked. Just sit and watch a film and chill.

So, after a couple of emails from our Nicola, I thought it selfish of me not to share the fun.

I’m not going to do it chronologically anymore. It’s going to be more about musings as they come into my head really.

Take yesterday. We wanted to visit three places, one of which is a spa town, high in Serra de Monchique, the town itself is the local capital, Monchique.

It sits virtually atop one of the steeper mountains in the range, and as is our want, we decided to get Norman to guide us there. When we were at sea level or thereabouts, Helga told me there was 130 miles worth of fuel left in her tummy. I decided that since our destination was only twenty two away, I’d get her a drink on the way back. The problem with hilltop destinations is its all climb to reach there, and yes there were a few very steep sections of this narrow twisty road.

Now although Helga is really fit, she gets a bit thirsty if she’s left open to any form of exertion, the warning light came on for low fuel and we were “temporarily misplaced”. This is a new Normanism, a term we use when a certain electronic piece of shit has lied to us again. Maybe we can’t use the thing right, but when we use reference points, or coordinates rather than addresses it works.

Can a GPS be illiterate?

Never mind. We found our destination, and it did have a garage. Suitably sated and quenched we drove to the pretty town centre, village really. Seemed familiar, but one town mells into another after almost three thousand miles. In the middle there is a circular route, about sixty feet in diameter that you drive round to get to an exit for parking amongst other things. This wee place has a few bars / coffee shops, and since it was such a nice day they were bunged. As we drove round the circle, dozens of heads turned in unison at the sight of Helga with the sun reflecting of her snow white dress. If she had have had eyelashes on her headlights she would have fluttered them. Now there’s a thought.

After visiting all the touristy spots, and on our way back to Helga, I realized we had indeed been here before just last March. We had been based in Albufiera and hired a car. This had been one of the towns we visited, indeed we had a fantastic lunch very close by but couldn’t find the place again.

It was probably up another bloody mountain.

Albufiera this time, we stayed for two nights in an Aire at the top of the town beside the bus station. We decided to catch the bus into the centre for a nosey and off we went. Although we’d been here before, it was a package holiday and apart from the hotel area we didn’t know the town. The bus was one of those Giro jobs, we since learnt that it does a loop, back  and forward all day. When we finally realized we’d been sitting on the bus a long time we arrived at our destination. No, not the town centre, but back at the bloody terminus. We hadn’t decided whether to try again but our minds were made up for us when the heavens opened, we hurriedly hobbled back to the Aire which although only across the road left the two of us soaked to the skin and water running out of us.

Not only that, but M had done the washing and it was out on the clothes horse!

Tarifa and the sparkly lights of Africa.

We spent an afternoon in Gibraltar which for me was a total disaster. There was a very long queue to get in, the Spanish guards were as sullen and hostile as Gerry Adams at a tory party conference. We found one parking space, at Morrison’s supermarket! We bought some groceries and cheap booze, and left. Toured the area looking for the Valhalla that is a parking space. Nothing.

I don’t like these extremely crowded spaces when I’m driving Helga, I fear that she might rear up and bite some poor unsuspecting pedestrian. We left,  nothing to see here sir. No monkeys, no WW11 relics, no al fresco lunch watching the world go by.

We headed North West towards Cadiz, on the way we saw a sign, indeed one of hundreds on our route, for camping. What we found was a field beside the sea with views over the sea to north Africa, about the same distance, nay less, than Larne to Scotland. We watched the wind surfing youngsters and the kite surfers enjoying their freedom.

Back at Helga we enjoyed our first barby a simple affair of chicken and peppers etc, seasoned with Piri Piri. A nice bottle of wine from Gibraltar sitting watching the lights of Morocco twinkling over the water. The evening was warm, the craic was mighty. It’s brilliant the way simple things give you such a buzz. Slept well that night, and although the sign stated our fee for the nights parking was two euro, nobody came to get it!