Pottering about

Just been pottering about for the last few days before we handed the hire car back.  We’ve managed to do a good walk in the mountains behind Calpe, about an hours drive from Alicante.  Great walking area with lots of paths and tracks.  This walk took us in a loop up into the mountains above the Leper Colony at Fontilles.  The colony is now a leprosy research centre, of  

First view stop

world renown apparently, training doctors from around the world. It was built in 1902 and has a big wall encircling a huge area to try and keep the infection from spreading, it was totally self sufficient with its own bakers, carpenters, theatre and of course church and graveyard.  Beautiful place now though.

Leprosy complex in the valley

On the way home we drove over one of the colls used on the Vuelta d’Espana cycle race - impressively steep but not as impressive as the apple strudel in the Spanish/German cafe at the top of the pass!

We"re not far from Benidorm!

Some terracing belies belief

The cherry blossom and flowers are lovely

We’ve also had a couple of padel tennis lessons while in Alicante - its a sort of cross between squash and lawn tennis, with back walls that you can bounce the ball off - if you’re good enough. The racquets are like giant table tennis bats. We’ve seen padel a lot in Spain 

and a few years ago we had a try on a court but had no idea what we were doing. Now we know what we’re supposed to be doing!

A padel court is about half the size of a tennis court

The padel club also has 12 tennis courts

We’ve also had a couple of days of “comedy” rain - it was raining so hard, it was having a laugh!  Which was fine apart from our normally very dry boat decided to let three hatches leak at the same time so the jobs list grew and we’ve been replacing hatch seals.

Still, we managed to get out for a sail yesterday and anchored off a small island for a lazy lunch and then motored back in no wind just before the light went - lovely chilled out day.  Carole went swimming, though this time with a wetsuit on, and tried out the waterproof camera we’ve bought to replace the one we drowned coming along the coast from France - and it works.

Dave loves our boat

We're not too good at selfies!

The camera works

Road Trip Part 2 - Andorra and back

After a great few days we said farewell and headed off back towards Alicante.  We decide to cross the Pyrenees via Andorra as we’ve never been.  Fabulous mountain passes and snow fields glistening under a blue sky - we are very lucky people! Again awesome, dramatic, scenery as we crossed the coll from France into Andorra and then dropped sharply down the main valley into the tax free shopping city of Andorra la Ville.  the main bargains seem to be on alcohol and cigarettes which is a bit odd as you can only, legally, take 1.5 litres of spirits out of the country into Spain.

Lovely Andora

They sell some very strange things in Andora!

We carried on and stopped in a tiny village called Bellver de Cerdanya, another medieval town that could have been a film set.  The local hotel had fab views across the town and to the mountains beyond, all for 42€ B&B.  After an enormous, silver service, breakfast we crushed the little Fiats suspension and set off again.  Avoiding the bigger, toll, roads as much as possible, except for a 6km long tunnel under the Pyrenees.

View from our verandah

As we slid down the slopes into the foot hills in the distance we saw an amazing rocky outcrop ahead of us, all spikes and rock chimneys.  It turned out to be the huge limestone massif of Montserrat.  We headed off towards a sign for a mountain railway and found a rack railway that crawled most of the way up the massif to the monastery situated just below the peak of the rocks, some 500m up.  We caught the train to the monastery .  Its an amazing place, still has 80 monks but also an enormous hostel for todays pilgrims, and a 3 star hotel for those slightly less “pilgrimy” pilgrims.  Its a big tourist attraction now but still a religious community, complete with one of the oldest boys choirs in Europe - we heard them sing in the Basilica, impressive to say the least.

Our first view of Montserrat

Inside the monastery - listening to the choir

Montserrat has themes amazing rock formations

A funicular train took us nearly to the top of the massif and we were able to walk to the top of the outcrop and see the views from a disused hermitage built into  a large crack in the bedding plane of the rock.  Apparently the retired bishops used to live here and look out over Catalunya towards the Balearics.

Amazing place

A funicular took us to the top

Time was pressing so with the wonders of internet and booking.com we found a Habitacione in another medieval village - this time on the coast though, at Peniscola. For €30 we got a small, quirky but cute and comfortable room above a restaurant in the heart of this heavily fortified rock outcrop that sticks out into the Med. A sand spit and road joins it to the mainland and a host of modern hotels and restaurants!  Peniscola was one of the Templar strongholds and briefly the seat of the Pope when he fled Rome. 

Peniscola is very pretty

We had to ring the bar owner to find the place in the tiny streets, he turned up on a moped and we shot off after him through the stone walls and into streets only just wide enough for the Fiat 500 to get through - to a free parking spot outside his place.  It was normally used for tables and chairs for the bar but at this time of year just about all the restaurants and bars were closed for renovation and prepping for the summer season.  The owner guessed we were english (can’t think why) and lent us a kettle to make tea in our rooms - he assumed we had tea with us - we did!  He then left us to it - the only occupants of the place.

Our little hostal was brilliant

We wandered around for a while and then had to walk across to the modern mainland part to find a cheap restaurant that was open.

The cannon was missing.

We’d sailed past here a couple of months ago and said then that we wanted to visit - it didn’t disappoint, although again I suspect in August it will be wall to wall tourists.  This is a great time of year to go touring around here - the weather is pretty good and the prices are better.

Today we’ve made it back to the boat and have crashed out for a while - its been a fabulous week away and now time to get back on with the jobs list and then go sailing for a while.  The weather looks like it may go off for a couple of days but then pick up again so probably a good time to do some work.

Just seen fog for the first time since we sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, it gave us chance to take some great photos - even the replica galleon in the harbour looked almost real!

 And England have won the Six Nations Rugby, with a match in hand, what a great way to end a fabulous week!  Watched most of this weekends matches in a Irish bar in Alicante with friends - great stuff! Looking forward to the final match against Ireland next week.

Road Trip to France

The wonders of the internet and out of season travel managed to let us find a hire car for £32 for two weeks - can’t complain about that although we then had to pay €90 for “cross border insurance” but still, just over £100 for two weeks isn’t bad at all.  It turned out that the car was a brand new Fiat 500 too.

Our little hire car 

Interesting menu

We set off up the E roads, tollroads, to make good time, but at Barcelona we headed inland into the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenean mountains.  We stopped short of the border in a small medieval village called Vall d’en Bas at a rural farmstead that had simple apartment rooms and a small restaurant.  It turned into a lucky find as the restaurant was one of very few in the area, and produced really good locally produced food. Carole had a strange but good rice soup and I had an excellent black sausage course.  They found an english (sort of) translated menu for us - never did found out what “eggs in mausoleum” was, but we worked out that the “house gutters” was cannelloni, makes a sort of tube sense. 

First nights stop

The following day we climbed higher, crossing high valleys and then above the snow line and into the Spanish ski centre of La Molina; it was Sunday and packed with people, before crossing the border and dropping down into France.

Gorgeous scenery on the way over

Ruth and Colin’s beautiful house is in a tiny village, St Martin-Lys, set into a picturesque gorge, about an hours drive west from Carcassonne. Colin had asked us to bring some Spanish plonk which we dutifully did, €1.40/L in a second hand plastic water bottle, found in a village vignoble at the foot of the mountains - it was actually pretty damn good and better than some of the “proper” wine brought from Alicante!

The house of Ruth and Colin

They took us to Carcassonne the next day - a fabulous walled city, apparently the third most visited site in France after Paris and Mont St Michel - easy to see why, with its perfectly preserved/renovated medieval city. It was great to wander the quiet narrow streets and imagine what it was like hundred of years ago - must be hell in 21stC August, packed with tourists.

Town of Carcassonne in the background

Entrance to Carcassonne

The following day the four of us went to a Cathar castle, perched high on a mountain, one of a chain stretching from the coast around the Cathar’s region.  The Cathars believed in a simple form of Catholicism but not in the authority of the Pope and so were declared heretics and slaughtered or burned alive. 

Spring on the way

The Queberis castle was one of their last stands.  

Very windy walk up!

Hanging on as the wind was that strong.

The views from the castle were simply breathtaking - especially as it was so windy that it was truly difficult to stand on some of the exposed edges and gates.  Very exhilarating!

The 4 bears?

Our grand tour continued through stunning scenery and quaint villages before return to St Martin-Lys via the amazing narrow and very deep Gorge de Galamus.  From the narrow lane cut into the side of a cliff face to the bottom of the gorge must have been 400feet at least.

Amazing gorge

Hermitage De Galamus in the rock face

Fat Boat in the Med

We got most of our jobs done at home and more importantly caught up with some of our family and friends during February.  Then the lure of a cheap flight and good weather won - £19 each, all in, Manchester to Alicante - and we are back on the boat for about a month - another cheap flight back at the beginning of April.

Lovely weather back home!

But cosy of an evening in front of the fire

The evening skies are fabulous at the moment and the weather is starting to settle and warm.  

Nice sunsets

We took the boat out to give the engine a run and anchored off a beach just east of Alicante town so that Carole could go for  swim - mad fool that she is - the water temperature was showing 13.8C, way, way too cold for me! I need at least another 5, preferably 10, degrees on that.

This is my idea of heaven

View from a swimming angle - mop and brush handy!

Not expecting to do much sailing but hoping to meet up with various boaty friends and have a bit of a road trip into the mountains. Then on into France to see Colin and Ruth who have bought a place near Quillan.  Dave and Mari are coming out to see us at the end of March as well.

In between times we’ve got a load of “little” jobs to do, some repairs, some upgrades on the boat to keep us busy - there really is no such thing as a little job on a boat, everything takes at least twice as long as you think.