11th September – 3rd October (Spain)
We have finally managed to pick up a couple of folding bikes at the local Carrefour (supermarket) and they have already been put to good use, as we’ve been riding them most days. It means we can go further afield and also makes shopping so much easier and quicker! We had intended buying them last year but never quite got around to it.
We had only just said goodbye to Steve & Lynne, who were returning to Almerimar for the winter, when my brother Niall and his wife Nathalie paid us a visit. They had driven over from their holiday home about 60 miles away to see us. We spent a very enjoyable afternoon on the boat catching up with all their news, and then walked into La Linea for a meal in the evening.
Gibraltar is a 15-20 minute walk away and once through the border control, you have to walk across the runway to reach the town. There is a Morrison’s supermarket, which we have visited a couple of times to stock up with all the things we can’t get in Spain and Mike is delighted to be drinking orange squash and coffee with coffee mate. Hopefully we’ll be able to buy sufficient to last us through next year as well, so we’ve been checking the use by dates very carefully! We’ve done the obligatory taxi tour of the rock, to see the cave, siege tunnels and monkeys. It’s well worth doing as the drivers are all very knowledgeable and it makes for a very interesting tour, which we really enjoyed. The view from the top of the rock is spectacular; looking west is the Atlantic, east is the Mediterranean and south is over to Africa.
One day we visited the Botanic Gardens and enjoyed wandering around the well laid out walks, through many lovely plants and trees from various parts of the world. Apparently it is a very popular place for weddings and I can understand why. There is also a small wildlife conservation park, which was started in 1994 with a collection of birds and animals which had been confiscated from illegal traders who were passing through Gibraltar. The Trafalgar Cemetery, which was Gibraltar’s military cemetery in the 19th century, seems to be home to a colony of the Rock’s monkeys. There were at least a dozen youngsters roaming around and seemed to be oblivious to members of the public. We cycled to Europa Point, which is the southernmost tip of the rock and saw the lighthouse, which is the only one outside the UK that is regulated by Trinity House. On our way back to the boat we stopped off at a small museum which houses the 100 ton gun and overlooks Nelson’s anchorage in Rosia Bay, where HMS Victory was towed after Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.
Mike thought it would be a good idea to sail over to Ceuta for a couple of days. This is a Spanish city located on the north coast of Africa and shares a border with Morocco. We left La Linea in beautiful sunshine and motor sailed across in little wind, arriving mid-afternoon. By the time we had Mistroma tied up securely the sky was beginning to look very grey, but we decided to go for a look around the town and luckily it stayed dry until we got back. Later on in the evening, however, the heavens opened and it poured off and on all night. We had been hoping that the next day would see some improvement in the weather, but unfortunately it went downhill and we had thunder and lightning and torrential rain for most of the day. The rain finally stopped in the late afternoon, and we managed to go out again and had a look around the old fort, which probably would have had some great views if only we could have seen them. The following day we motored back to Gibraltar and spent a couple of nights in each of the two marinas in the town, waiting for a weather window to allow us to continue towards Aguadulce, where Mistroma will be spending the winter.
