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