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Day Trip To Gibraltar & Other Stories
Sausage, bacon and egg in a bun, a little dash of brown sauce, a sweetened cappuccino: hangover cure par excellence. It’s needed, last night was a long night and today is going to be a long day. But we can’t be this close to Gibraltar without making a visit – the first visit to an overseas British territory for either of us. Our base now is the coastal town of San Luis de Sabinillas on the Costa del Sol, for our last taste of the Spanish Mediterranean on this long journey south. We’ve chosen this location not just for one last dip in the blue but for two other reasons…
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Granada & The Alhambra
It’s on the Wednesday morning in Granada that it happens, proper confirmation that I am old. Here I am, fresh from walking the Caminito del Rey, sporting a T-shirt from my travels, boarding a shuttle bus from city centre to the Alhambra and feeling full of the joie de vivre which travelling the world brings, when some guy stands up to offer me his seat. This is the first time anywhere in the world that this has happened to me. I must look so old now that it’s obligatory for someone to offer me their seat. I am suddenly and undeniably an old git. Inside I’m cursing him and wanting…
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Nerja, Frigiliana & The Caminita del Rey
On January 12th 1959, five male students failed to report for lessons at a local school in Nerja, not in itself an earth shattering event – indeed the tutor, one Carlos Saura Garre, assumed they had either met some girls or had decided that a movie would be more entertaining than a lecture. Neither of these was the case: the boys had in fact plucked up courage to go through a small entrance to a sinkhole and head underground to see what they might discover. What they did discover must have blown their young minds. Beneath the waste land just behind the village of Maro, they walked into a gigantic…
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From Mojácar To Nerja Via The Wild West
With about three hours of the Mediterranean Highway ahead of us we take a detour away from the straight road, out through the sleepy towns of Sorbas and Tabernas and on into the rocky barren country inland. This is the closest thing in western Europe to a genuine desert, but this is spectacular and rugged mountain desert rather than the flat sands of the Sahara, for instance. It’s big country. As we mentioned in our last post, this is where the movie “A Fistful Of Dollars” was mostly filmed, together with a whole host of other so-called spaghetti Westerns, which just leads you to wonder why we don’t know them…
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On To Mojácar: Pink Lakes, Red Prawns & Silver Moonlight
More often than not, when you visit something with a name like “the blue forest” or “the purple mountains”, they’re not really blue or purple, are they. OK so there may be a hint of the colour which gives the place its moniker, but you would never call it vivid. Until, that is, you visit the Lugano Rosa, the “pink lake”, just outside the town of Torrevieja, which is properly, undeniably pink. It’s rental car time again as we look to fully explore the next section of Spanish coastline and head down into Andalucia, driving south from Alicante and taking a detour specifically to see whether this lake really is…
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Krka National Park
As well as the many attributes of its own, the city of Šibenik is also a gateway to the Krka National Park, another spectacular series of waterfalls as the Krka river crashes down the mountains towards the Adriatic. To access the park, we drive to the small town of Skradin, from where we take a river boat to the falls: a wise decision, as Skradin turns out to be a charming and peaceful place in its own right. Krka is markedly different from Plitvice. Plitvice was largely unspoilt, and clearly less popular, perhaps due to its more remote location. Around the sixteen lakes there were only three modest cafes, spaced…
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Walk On The Wild Side
There is very little to occupy one’s time during this lockdown, but thankfully the behavioural guidance from the UK Government includes taking outdoor exercise once per day. For us, our daily walk in the countryside is our only escape other than shopping for food, but it’s a very welcome daily event. Luckily, we live in a village surrounded by attractive countryside and woodland and can walk straight from our house into open country, safe in the knowledge that we will see almost no one and easily practice social distancing. Equally luckily, this period of lockdown has so far coincided with a spell of lovely Spring weather, we’ve had a lot…
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Potholes and Waterfalls: Koh Lanta By Road
The best and most commonly used way of getting around this island is by moped, but if like us you don’t ride then there are tuk tuks and backs of trucks, but it’s around 300-350 baht each way to cross the island, so hiring a small car for 24 hours at 1200 baht is a decent option. A grocery store near our home in Klong Nin has hire cars available; there’s no insurance forms to complete, you can’t pay by card (cash only), they don’t even check driving licences. They take no deposit, but instead hold my passport hostage until we return the car. Husband is slightly moody as he…
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From the City to the Islands: The Next Stage
We’ve now moved on from what was essentially a city break and on to the island holiday part of our trip, the idea always having been that after the Bangkok experience we chill out for a couple of weeks before we start the more adventurous parts of this journey. So we’re into a certain mode now, we know this is holiday island and not the “real” Thailand, but it’s chill time before we hit the real country. And so we now find ourselves in the village of Klong Nin on the island of Koh Lanta in the southern part of Thailand, billeted right on the beach with the sea lapping…
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Michaela on tour- week two
Week two of my retirement and I head off to visit family in South Birmingham in the Midlands, another week of eating, drinking and fun. Although I am from Birmingham originally, I haven’t lived here for many years so today I take a solitary tour around a number of special childhood places and a trip down memory lane centred around the village of Bournville and the home of Cadbury’s chocolate. Maybe I am biased but in my opinion Cadbury’s is the best chocolate in the world!! My family has a long history with Cadbury’s, my Nan was an original Cadbury girl starting work there at the age of 14 back…
