Leaving Spain with a bang!

We are about to leave Spain to travel east for summer 2018.  Our plans are to cross to the Balearics, round Corsica and Sardinia then on to Sicily before sailing into the Adriatic, but we can’t leave Spain without telling you how much fun we had in Valencia at the festival of Las Fallas.

In case you didn't know, Greg loves fireworks! Well, he read about the festival two years ago and was so excited by the idea, he had our spot in the marina in Valencia booked before we had even left the UK. We thought it would be massively booked up but surprise, surprise - Las Fallas must be one of the world’s best kept secrets. We can’t understand why it isn’t more well-known and those who joined us this year were equally surprised.

Lots of visitors came over for the festival and we were really pleased to spend time with Ela and Piotr Bochinski, Ren and Paul Chodakowski, Miranda and Ed, Sue Johne and Miriam Wood, plus Tom and Kate from yacht Nightfall. Greg’s birthday happily coincided with the event and we enjoyed some celebratory drinks with friends as a result.

If you have never been to it, we would recommend you put it on your to-do list.  It is the most amazing festival we have ever been to.

So what is Las Fallas and why is it so great?

The festival lasts from the 1^st to the 19^th March every year, but the key events are really between the 15^th and the 19^th of March. It is the Festival of St Joseph and essentially celebrates the coming of the new (spring) and the burning of the old (winter). So it’s a combination of a massive flower festival and outrageous pyrotechnics.

It’s a massive party - there are free outdoor DJs and bands with street parties everywhere; bars spilling over into the street, loads of stalls and street food sellers.  The city is obsessed with fireworks and firecrackers, so there are pop up shops selling fireworks and there are endless sparks and bangs taking place at random.  

Greg trying to decide which fireworks to buy!

Greg politely turning down some stylish sunglasses

Even small children are lugging huge boxes of fireworks and setting off firecrackers all over the streets (mostly with no parents in sight!).  Ren speculated that children in Valencia are as comfortable playing with fire as children in St Anton are on skis.  Even their pets lie around sleeping whilst mayhem goes on around them.  

The Mascleta

Every day from the 1st of March until the 19th March at 2pm in the main square (Plaza Ayuntamiento) there is a choreographed spectacle of firecrackers and booming bangs. Each day a different company competes for the best and loudest display.  The winners get to do the final Mascleta on the 19^th. 

Although it sounds a bit odd, there is great excitement and anticipation and its definitely worth getting there early to get a place where your ears can be sufficiently assaulted! The noise at the climax is literally ground-shaking, you can't help but smile!

The Ninots

Every district in the city has a Fallas club and a local committee; they fund-raise all year to fund the building of their Ninot. An exhibition of models of the Ninots can be seen at the Science Park, where you are invited to vote for the one you like best. The most popular one is the only one which is not burnt.  

Some of the Ninots are as tall as the buildings

The Ninots are works of art, sometimes costing up to 100,000 Euros

The Ninots start being built around the 15^th and have to be completed by dawn of the 16^th.  There is much partying going on overnight as the Ninots take shape.  Many are built worryingly close to buildings and the fire brigade is on hand for many of them to hose down the nearby buildings.

Ed and Miranda on the Ninot trail. There are approx 800 across the city

On the final night of the 19^th, to get rid of the Ninots all of them apart from the winning Ninot are burned across the city. We saw one burning so close to the surrounding apartments that the fire brigade had to douse the buildings to stop them catching fire.

Spectacular Ninot in Plaza Ayuntamiento

Ninot burning

The Fire Parade - Cavalcada dela Foc

At 7pm on the 19^th there is also a parade celebrating fire which was also exciting and worth visiting. We got a good viewing spot right next to the barrier so saw all of the floats, fire-eaters and human fireworks very close up!  You can hear Ren and I screaming in the background of this video!

Flowers for the Virgin

On the 17^th and 18^th there is a beautiful procession of people in Spanish traditional dress, bringing flowers to the square called Plaza de la Virgin. The final flower is laid by the Fallas queen at midnight on the 18.^th The square is filled with amazing flowers and a flower sculpture is built bloom by bloom over the 2 days. Definitely worth visiting.

The framework to hold the flowers is built in the days before

Thousands of people in traditional costume bring flowers. you can see men  attaching each stem to the frame behind

The finished framework representing a cloak for the Virgin

Walls of flowers in the square

This video tries to capture the scale of the floral displays

Firework displays

There are late night firework displays for four days.  The first one is on the 15^th in Plaza Ajumenta and then the next three are in the old river bed (the green artery) between the Bridge of Flowers and the Exposition Bridge.  Although these start very late; midnight on the 15^th and 16th, 1am on the 17^th and then 1.30am on the 18^th, they are well worth staying up for.

Again health and safety is not a high priority….you can cycle right past the firework area until quite close to the time of the event! 

So now all is calming down and we are getting ourselves ready to leave. We already have a few dates booked up with people planning to visit us in June in Croatia and October in Corfu which we are really looking forward to. But there are plenty of other available weeks if you fancy coming along this summer.

Our first insurance claim!....

If we were to assess this month in terms of the Ups and Downs, it would probably be fair to say the Downs have it.  But everything’s relative and if you are reading this at work on a gloomy, cold rainy day you are probably scoffing.

Since we got back from Ceuta to La Linea the weather has been very variable, requiring some duvet days and hunkering down as well as venturing out when sunny to visit other local attractions. We also took the opportunity to build up some stores of bits and pieces we hadn’t even realised we had missed from the Eroski (Waitrose stockists) in Gib.  Spanish cider tends to be very sweet so we now have a cupboard full of decent cider which should last us - until at least the end of this week.  The quality tea bags will last a bit longer and hopefully we won’t need the porridge and hot chocolate for too much longer.

Duvet day...

On a sunny day, we cycled from La Linea to San Roque but had a bit of a nightmare when we found ourselves accidentally on a motorway on our bicycles! I really struggled after all that Christmas pud and chocolate to get up an extremely steep hill; wobbling and panting away with lorries hurtling past.  Greg chivalrously cycled well ahead of me and got off the motorway more quickly in case the police saw us there.  He was probably thinking one fine would be better than two…….

San Roque turned out to be a very picturesque mountain village.  The tourist information office personnel welcomed us with open arms and adopted us for the afternoon; it had clearly been a slow month.  We were getting a bit restless as the lunch time restaurant opening hours were fading fast but our British politeness prevailed and sadly the restaurant we had planned to go to for lunch was already closed when we finally got there.  

However, the head of tourist information drew a new route for our return avoiding the motorway and it turned out to be very interesting if not a typical tourist trail.

The route took us round the back of the oil refinery in Algeciras, past some very deserted beaches and a very impressive graffiti wall.

Some cool graffiti

I wonder why the beach is so quiet?

We also passed through a section of deserted mansions, built on sea-front land purchased in the 1950s by a rich woman hoping to create a Sotogrande resort, only to be thwarted by the building of the oil refinery next door in the 1960s.

It would have been lovely without the refinery next door....

We decided to head north when a good weather window opened and managed a fabulous day sailing to Fuengirola. 

Another trip to UK had to be scheduled for a follow up medical appointment and the flights from Malaga were even better than from Gibraltar. It's easy to see why Malaga airport is so busy. There's very easy access to the surrounding areas - the metro goes every 20 minutes from Fuengirola to the airport for 7 euros return.  Compared to the cost of the Gatwick Express or even a normal train ticket in UK it’s a dream.  I think that's the difference between a state owned transport system and one that needs to make a profit! 

It was a glorious day in Fuengirola when we arrived and we made the most of it by getting out our shorts.  It felt as though winter was over, but how wrong could we be!!!

Now for the disaster………………………

We knew the forecast was for high winds whilst we were back in UK so we made sure we were well fendered up and pulled away from the pontoon.  Unfortunately last Sunday the winds were upwards of 50mph; "unexpected and unprecedented" said the Marineros!  During this gale, our staysail became unfurled and the clew flapped about creating lots of damage to the sail and the forestay.

When we returned Greg rang Pantaenius, our insurance company to make a claim for the damage, only to discover that they don’t cover sails (or anything to do with sails for that matter). Why are we not surprised?? So today it has taken four hours to get the sail down and taken away for repair.  We will know the estimated cost on Monday ☹. Looks like the planned few days skiing in the Sierra Nevada might be on hold. 

It's nice to be back.....

Sorry that I haven't been in touch for a while, but Jan and I have been back in the UK for a few weeks seeing our friends and family over Christmas. We arrived back on the boat last week and whilst it was nice visiting the UK I must say it was great to be back in what we now think of as our home. 

Just before my departure to the UK there were some ferocious winds here. The highest gust I registered was more than 50 knots and even though we were moored in the marina the boat was heeled so much that things were falling out of the cupboards and bottles were falling over. Some of the yachts here were damaged by banging into the pontoon and several had torn sails. We were therefore very relieved to find that all was good on the boat and nothing had been damaged whilst we were away.

It felt a bit strange to be in England after so long away and the weather was a bit grim after the mild temperatures we have been enjoying here in Spain for the past months, but it was lovely to see everyone and we had a very pleasant Christmas with Jan's family in Yorkshire. I must take this opportunity to give Laura our special thanks for putting us up at her farm in Henley for 10 days, it was greatly appreciated! 

The sun was shining and it was very warm when we got back here so the first thing I did was use one of my Christmas presents. Our daughter Miranda gave me a Gin Pennant and this is a special flag which when flown indicates you are open for drinks. Fortunately no-one else in the marina recognised the flag so we weren't inundated by mobs of thirsty sailors, but it gave us a good excuse to sample the gin collection we have built up whilst we have been close to the duty-free shopping in Gibraltar.

We had originally planned to set off for Morocco, but yet again we have maintenance issues. Our on-deck chart plotter has a touchscreen and this has been giving us intermittent problems. The screen seems to fail at the most inconvenient and inappropriate moments - for example when we are approaching ports; rocks; or other things we would rather not hit. It's a Raymarine plotter and still under warranty so when we first arrived here in La Linea we contacted the Raymarine dealer who had to send it back to the UK for repair/replacement. The repair was supposed to have been completed by now but inevitably it has been delayed so we had to postpone our departure. Hopefully it should be back in a couple of weeks.

We have now spent quite a long time in La Linea so we decided that whilst we were waiting for the plotter to be repaired we should go across the Straits of Gibraltar to explore Ceuta for a couple of days. Ceuta is a bit of an oddity,.....it is a Spanish enclave in Morocco and I must say I think that the Spanish are a bit cheeky with their demands for Gibraltar to be given back whilst they maintain their foothold in Africa!

It is only 15 miles across the Straits of Gibraltar and the weather forecast was for light winds so we expected the trip to be fairly benign - WRONG! The Straits seem to experience a micro-climate which defies prediction. As we motored out of Gibraltar Bay the wind increased steadily....When the wind reached 10 knots we unfurled the sails and revelled in the opportunity for a decent sail. When the wind reached 20 knots we reefed the Main and enjoyed the speed and exhilaration. When the wind reached 25 knots we decided to put on our lifejackets and also put on oilskins to protect ourselves from the spray that was hitting us constantly. When it peaked at 30 knots we were more than half way across, so it was easier to carry on than go back - but had this been the forecast we wouldn't have left Gib! We were very wet and very relieved to arrive safely and without breakages when we finally reached Ceuta.

Hercules Statue at the entrance to Ceuta Harbour

Ceuta was very pleasant and perhaps it was our imagination fuelled by the knowledge that we were in North Africa, but it seemed much warmer than Gibraltar.

We stayed for a couple of nights but then noticed that the forecast for the next week was for strong winds so after our experience on the way over we decided to curtail our exploration and return whilst we still could. Again our journey across the Straits wasn't easy, because in addition to the brisk winds there was a 6 knot current running and we had a couple of quite close calls with the ships in transit.

We are now safely back in La Linea and the weather is grim with lots of wind and rain! Roll on Summer.......

Morocco is a very interesting, but very foreign country!....

Our last update was a couple of weeks ago when we were in Almerimar. From there we moved on to Marina d'Este near Almunecar. We stopped at Marina d'Este because it was a convenient place from which to travel to Nerja where we had been told there were some fabulous caves. It can sometimes be a bit underwhelming when you make the effort to visit sights that have been recommended - but not in this case.....the caves were amazing!! I have posted some photos below, but they don't really do the caves justice, you can't really get any idea of their scale. They were huge and the stalactites and stalagmites were astounding. Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. 

Our next stop was Puerto de Velez and to be fair, it didn't have a great write up in our Pilot Book. In spite of this it still managed to disappoint us. It was a fishing port and definitely one of the grimmest marinas we have visited so far. It was plagued with seagulls, presumably because of the fish offal that was regularly being deposited in the water there. We left early the next morning for Benalmadena with quite a few seagull souvenirs on our previously pristine decks.

Seagulls flocking round in Puerto de Velez as the offal is ejected.....

Don't get a dark cover on your boat!

Benalmadena is quite a pretty spot, much nicer than Puerto de Velez. In fact it claims to be the Trip Advisor Marina of the Year - I presume this is because of the votes from the trippers who visit the bars and tourist shops around the marina because I don't think it can be based on the votes of the yacht owners who use the marina. 

Benalmadena was a pretty spot, but........

It certainly didn't get my vote. I had several criticisms of the place:
1. They had a non-standard plug socket for their shore power, but instead of providing an adaptor as other marinas with unusual connections do, it was necessary to take off our plug and wire in theirs. Not a huge issue perhaps, but irritating and unnecessary.
2. Their Wi-Fi was useless! A few places get it right but the wi-fi in most marinas is pretty poor, I can't understand why it is so difficult. Anyway in Benalmadena it was appalling.
3. The security was non-existent and this was my biggest issue. Generally there is a gate preventing access to the pontoons unless you have a keycard or the access code. Not here!! At 01:00 we were woken by the sound of people climbing onto Viridian. I presume they were trying to steal our bikes, which were stored on the aft deck. Fortunately they ran off without taking anything after we disturbed them but it tainted the marina for me. We left the next morning.

From there we went to Fuengirola which was a good place to visit the hilltop town of Mijas. Strangely, there were some interesting pieces of Salvador Dali artwork in the Picasso museum here.

Dali's iconic work, Swans reflecting Elephants

We next stopped in Estepona. 

I liked this mural in Estepona

I liked the old town in Estepona, which was splendidly decorated with flowers.

The highlight of this passage was that we were visited by some dolphins who came to play with the boat. This was a nice surprise because we hadn't seen any dolphins for a long time, I guess they may be a bit more common nearer to the Atlantic. 

We are now back in La Linea next to Gibraltar, which is where we are leaving Viridian whilst we return to the UK for Christmas. Since we are staying here for a while we decided to take a trip to Tangier, which is only a short distance across the Straits of Gibraltar. Well, it was a fascinating trip because although it is only a short distance geographically it is a huge distance culturally.

We booked a very reasonably priced hotel, the Dar Jameel, in the Medina. However actually finding it was slightly more complicated than we had expected - the old town was a maze of narrow streets filled with houses and little shops selling all the goods imaginable. 

Whilst we were searching for the hotel it was a bit of a hassle because we were continually accosted by locals who wanted to guide us; sell to us; or just wanted money, but when we eventually found the hotel we loved it.

We went exploring and found it was a very pretty city. 

The market was fascinating, the plethora of exotic fish, meats and vegetables was stunning. 

That evening we went out for a wander and discovered that crossing the road is a very different experience from Spain, where the drivers are very considerate to pedestrians. In Morocco zebra crossings were merely road decoration and you play a game of chicken with the car drivers, taking your life in your hands every time you tried to cross.

Alcohol is difficult, but not impossible to find. Since we had OD'd on mint tea during the day we searched for a bar serving alcohol and spent an enjoyable evening being fed an unending stream of free tapas whilst we drank.

I like free food with my beer.....

The strangest thing we found was the separation of men and women. The bars were full of groups of men, chatting; drinking mint tea, watching the football - whatever, but there were no women there at all! It seemed very peculiar......