Money for Old Rope

So much for getting on with it. On Saturday afternoon we said a fond farewell to Bee & Bill and all the doggies. (Except Gucci, who’s stowed away in the wardrobe – don’t tell them, they’ll never notice!)

Thank you for having us and for interpreting and running us around and showing us the beautiful country you live in. Miss you guys already!

We tootled off in a sort of Marbella direction and turned onto the good old A7. For a good 20kms east of Marbella the dual carriageway runs parallel to the beach with less than 200m between them. This gap is full of hotels and villas with the occasional beach access carefully hidden between them. The trick is finding one with a car park at the end of it and slotting a 27’ bus into the slip road without incurring the wrath of a Spanish truck driver. Far more by luck than judgment we managed it first go and parked up behind the Royal Beach Bar at Calahonda beach. Result! We had our usual walk along the beach, then tried to find the local village; not easy. This bit of Spain doesn’t seem to recognise pedestrians. The idea is that you only walk from your hotel/villa to the beach and back, everything else is done by car, so we found ourselves walking behind the Armco along the side of the A7 in the dark with a storm brewing. Not a nice place to be and we were glad to get back to our cosy little home. On Sunday we restricted our walking to two or three hours beach-combing; much nicer and we came away with three sea urchins, a useful length of braided cord and a euro!

As we were parked in such a sheltered little spot we decided to stay there for another night. It was Halloween on Sunday; thirteen years since we first noticed each other across a bonfire, (hence the boat name) and typically we would have been camping with our mates in a frosty field somewhere. It felt a bit strange to be in tee-shirts looking out over the moonlit med, drinking wine. Never mind, no doubt next year it’ll all be back to normal and freezing, except we’ll be afloat!

On Monday morning we continued our trend of mega-trucking and came to a halt all of 200m round the corner for a Mcwifi and a cafe con leche. We will at some point get on with it, but it’s nice and warm down here; there’s nowhere to go but north and we’re reluctant to start in that direction.