Bedrock

Saturday night was great – the owner of the Curry Club (in El Margen) remembered us from our last visit – which is always a good start – and the service and food was excellent. We met a younger couple who’ve just bought an “unreformed” cave to convert into a home – within sight of the restaurant – which really is out in the wilds – turns out he’s into technology – gaming design as I recall – and we got on very well chatting about early computer games – and so the twosome turned into a foursome and we all had a great evening. In the process of reading one of the local magazines while at the restaurant, I may have a contact to help me gripe to the rural broadband company about the less than sterling service we’ve had over the past few days. It’s one thing being out in the wilds, another being without broadband!!

Today (Sunday) we went to the beach – specifically, to Mojacar, less than two hours drive from our home in Galera. Weather was SUPERB hitting maybe 30 degrees with clear skies. The town overlooks the Mediterranean and our first job was to visit the market. Not much to write about I’m afraid, onespoilsport objected to me taking pictures – which made me wonder what he had to hide… but others were a lot more friendly – his immediate neighbour actively encouraged me to take pictures…

The area is hilly – so much so that the village itself is on a steep incline in parts – adding to the character immensely and reminded me just a little of Andorra. The sea-front however is flat, 7km long and very nice indeed. After checking out the market we popped into a local cafe half way up the hill for a coke then off to the beach – where we spent much of the day. There are large numbers of small stores, by the look of it run mainly by the Chinese, selling absolutely everything you could wish for – most of it being cheap Chinese imports – but I did manage to get a decent set of shorts and a presentable copy-watch out of our travels, before settling down at the beach. Unlike the North Sea which I’m used to back in Northumberland – which instantly shrinks various parts of the body, the Med here is GREAT – indeed, as I was standing neck-deep in the sea, I started to realise why Brits flock here by the million. The cool water exactly counter-balances the mid-day sun – and for my money you just can’t put yourself in a more comfortable situation.

The presense of significant numbers of Brits tends to detract from the atmosphere because the shop owners print everthing in English for our benefit – usually aiming at the lowest common denominator – and at resorts like this you begin to lose some of the excitement of being somewhere “foreign”. But today, there were relatively few people around, the weather was great and the sea-front restaurant food to be fair was also good. We could not really fault the day For sure it. beats sitting watching sport and looking out at the rain – HANDS DOWN.

It’s late-evening, the sun has just set, we’ve had a chat with passing new neighbours who similarly have spent the day exploring, Maureen is off booking flights for October and I’m sitting outside overlooking the mountains and updating this blog using the WIFI – which I need to extend upstairs – tried watching a movie in bed last night and failed miserably as the signal simply won’t go through the stone – thankfully I brought lots of spare equipment with me. It’s luke-warm outside and I’m just about to go get a nice cool beer and watch the stars appear. As always, more photos on Flickr. Tomorrow we’re waiting for the builder so I get to do some more jobs (and perhaps catch a little sun) – then in the afternoon Maureen is off looking at caves, armed with camera.