Holidays

We've been going for 3 months now, and really felt it was time for a break.  A canal boat, for example, for a fortnight or so.  And so here we are in the centre of Narbonne.  It's certainly different!

We really enjoyed meeting up with old friends around Barcelona, and taking Cathy and Marion up to the French border at Port Bou.  They had to put up with some very strong winds - always in the wrong direction.  The Tramontana blows very hard off the Pyrenees a lot of the time, and it was hard going at times.

We finally got the mast down - in one piece - in France, after quite a lot of hassle.  It wasn't helped by our nearly complete inability to speak French after three months in Spain.  Two consecutive French words was a success.  And  - hard to believe - a huge marina at Port Leucate where no one admitted to speaking a word of English (oui, je parle de vous!).  If things work, we'll meet the mast again in Pauillac, on the Gironde.  I wonder how you put it up...

Catalunya

Since Ibiza, we stayed for a few days in Mallorca, mainly on the mountainous NW coast.  Pleasant towns and spectacular mountains. 

 

The only problem was that it was too hot for much walking.  Still, a morning coastal walk followed by a swim and a good lunch in a fish restaurant overlooking a small cove isn't all bad.

We crossed back to Sitges on the mainland in a 20 hour motor in dead still conditions.  It was good that Alistair was with us to help with the watch-keeping.  And at least it was slightly cooler overnight.  Then from Sitges to Castelldefels, where we used to live.  We've had a nostalgiafest of meeting up with old friends, and revisiting old haunts.  The place has changed, of course, and in our view, mainly for the better.  Behaviour has changed too - cars screech to a halt at zebra crossings.  Ther's hardly any litter.  It's certainly more developed in all senses.

And now on to Mataro, to see more old friends, and to pick up Marion and Cathy who are having a weekend with us in the Costa Brava...

Ibiza

Yes that's right - Eyebeezer.  It's our second day here, with Alistair and we're chilling out (or something).  In fact it all seems very pleasant, if hot.  We're told that most of the more publicised activity comes from the far side of the island (San Antonio).  The marinas are very crowded and very, very expensive though.  We are anchoring a lot.

 It was slowly dawning on us on our way around that our boat is small.  She's really very small here, compared to most of the other craft around.  The motorboats (known as "stinkers" to us old salts) are enormous.  Gin palaces doesn't do them justice.  Some of them have tenders bigger than Sally T.  In fact I suspect that some of the tenders have bigger tenders than us.  We know our place!  What was it I was reading about the Spanish economy?

But economics isn't everything.  I remember saying that there'd be no more about football in this corner of the web.  But we can't really stick to that in the circumstances.  We spent the night of the match anchored about a mile off the shore of the Spanish mainland.  So we could follow the exciting events by the crowd reaction, and were in no doubt at all about who had won.  But we avoided the worst of the overnight, early morning and mid-morning noise.  When you see so much celebration even I can't help feeling quite pleased!!

 Val and I find that things normally run more smoothly if we stick to our traditional roles:  she does the domestic effort (cooking, washing ..) and I generally look after the boat.  So when she suggested I made dinner yesterday I had to find other activities....

The view was good too.

Alicante

Well, we had our Force 10 while we were safely in harbour in San Jose.  It didn't always feel that safe - the boat was bouncing about and moving every which way all night, but it was better than being at sea.  And we managed to find the way away from San Jose by leaving at 9.30 pm and sailing/motoring through the night.  Quite pleasant really except for an incident at dawn, when I just caught sight of a very long fishing net floating in front of us, and avoided it.  Half an hour earlier and we would have been caught!

We're now in Alicante, a pleasant - but hot - city, where Alistair is joining us.  Then it's off to Ibiza!!

Stuck

...and things were going so well.

We took a clean, punctual, cheap, air-conditioned bus to Almeria, an old Moorish city.  Mainly very attractive and surprisingly affluent.  It must be all the plastic agriculture in the hinterland, all the fruit, veg and flowers going to England.  However Val had her purse stolen, which was fairly bad news.  Credit cards, driving licence, some cashe etc, etc.  Luckily the passports were elsewhere.  However, we seem to have got things mainly sorted, and even managed to report the theft to an efficient and almost friendly policeman.  What is Spain coming to?

Now we're round another corner, in San José (we had to ask around a bit).  We're trying to head NE, which is  where the wind is coming from and it's strong (F8 today, F10 forecast tomorrow).  What's worse is that there are very few ports or even sheltered anchorages for some way.  So for the moment we're sitting tight and enjoying San José.  We got up at dawn yesterday and went for a 15 mile walk back to the cape (Cabo de Gata), so for a change here's a picture from the land side of a corner.

Green and pleasant it's not, but very impressive in it's way - and hot!