Blog 13


The weather’s changed.

It’s got chilly on a night. The sun still shines during the day, but not has hot 19°.We’re in Benalmadena waiting for James and Mabel (our son and granddaughter) to arrive at the railway station. We have rented an apartment for the four of us, for seven days holiday away from the van. We are parking the van out side the apartment where we can see it from the apartment balcony, best we can do, the apartment car park was full. Then we spent an 2 hours taking everything valuable out of the van in to the apartment. Security is important. 👍 Lovely to see James and Mabel not seen them for five months. It’s still quite busy in Benalmadena so plenty to do. We went on the beach, even went in the sea 😨 it’s was a bit cold getting in but once in it was great. We built a shell Castle with Mabel and I really enjoyed it, I’m just a big kid at heart 🤗.

We had a fantastic couple of days on the beach.😊 There’s a cable car that runs out of Benalmadena up mount Calamorro 800 meters high. So that’s where we went next. A 20 minute ride to the top. You can see Africa, Gibraltar, Sierra Nevada and most the Costa del Sol from the top. A short walk takes us to the valley of Eagles. Where you can see an exhibition of birds of prey, falcons, eagles, owls and vultures. A fabulous places well worth a visit. Next up a coach trip to Gibraltar, it’s 80miles away so up early 6 30am, the coach go’s at 7 15am. We had to pick up more passengers which took an hour,🤔 then it started to rain and it never stopped all day.⛈ It took us 2 hour 30 minutes to do 80miles to get to Gibraltar, and it was still poring down. We transferred to a minibus to take us up to the top of the rock, to see the monkeys and the caves. Half way up the windscreen wipers stop working on the minibus, the driver got out to repair them took him 10 minutes. When he got back in he looked like a drowned rat, he had only got one wiper going and said, to shall we carry on 🙃. I thought do you want us to walk lol. It was still poring down and the windows where all streamed up. We only saw two monkeys it was to wet for them and us 🌧. So we went into the caves. St Michael’s cave 300 meters above sea level, a network of caves made of lime stone, 1,000,000 visitors a year. The caves are spectacular all lit up with coloured lights, music concert are held there every month.

Back down to Gibraltar town for some shopping, only trouble is it’s still poring down and we’v got 3 hours before go back. Shopping in the rain is no fun, so we had a meal and then found a pub. 😊🤗. Gibraltar is a British overseas territory on the south Mediterranean coast of Spain. It as an area of 2.6 sq miles and population of 30,000. John Lennon got married to Yoko ono in Gibraltar on March 20th 1969, at the British Consulate office by registrar Cecil Wheeler. We’v had a lovely time with James and Mabel. Weather’s not been to bad apart from a bit of rain lol. We’ll see them in a month time when we get home. bye bye J&M.x A full English on the last morning xx. We got the van packed up again and off we went to Malaga beach for two day to chill out. This is the third time we’v been on Malaga beach to park. Not far from the city with lots of cycling tracks. We like it here. We’re planning our journey back home, lots more to see and do. We are going up the Mediterranean coast in to France . Stopping at Valencia Barcelona Perpignan Carcassonne Toulouse Limoges in to Normandy then to Calais over to Dover. But with lots of places in between. We’re on the road again just 70km to Rincon de la Victoria. A lovely aire 11€ a night. Run by a English woman from Skipton Yorkshire. We meet up with some friends we meet in Portugal. Hella and Robert from Germany. Lovely to meet up with them again. Rincon is a small town. We found a good bar / restaurant The La Calma that plays great music and serves lovely food. So we stayed seven days . Camper area M&H El Rincon..
Is a very good aire, they made us very welcome. 😊We’ll be back.😎

Next stop El Marimar on a Marina. We stayed 2 night. Lots of sailing boats. You can tell it’s off season  because it’s very quiet most of the bars and restaurants are shut. The Weather’s not to good, and 5 days of rain forecast so we’re moving on to the Valencia Camper park. A safe place to park, so we can go in to Valencia on the train. We got here at 4 00pm and booked in. We’d only been here five minutes and it started thundering and lightning and raining and it’s never stopped for 24 hours. We’v had to stay in the van all day hopefully we’ll  go to Valencia tomorrow. 
November must be the rainy season in Spain 🙄 all for now DP

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See you next time Derekandpatx.