WATCHING THE FLAMINGOES

Hola,

We heard from other travellers that there had been snow in Spain and a snow plough was needed in the Sierra Nevada near Granada. No such problems in Cabo de Gata. A couple of hours of heavy rain and quite high winds. Temperatures have been lower than normal, mid 60s - mid 70s but these have been just right for a lot of cycling and walking. We are in a large national park and there is great birdlife but sadly our camera cannot do it justice. Please use your imagination in the first photo to identify avocets and black-winged stilt. (The former may have flown away before I got in the shot!)

The area is pretty isolated. Below is a hermitage, with hermit on the steps, standing lonely at the end of one of our walks.

You can see we did not have to fight to get a place on this site.

The nearest village was about 45 minutes walk if you took the rough trail. Not the liveliest place in the world. It is really a summer resort and apart from market day, almost deserted.

A typical landscape, rugged terrain and sierra in the background waiting for Lee Van Cleef to ride on through.

More imagination please! These are a flock of migrating flamingoes. Next purchase when we get home is a good digital camera.

You could cycle for miles from our campsite all along the coast road. We stopped at the end - the end being when the road started going uphill!

A church in the middle of nowhere.

The two sites we have bee so far are totally different from each other. Cabo de Gata had a swimming pool that was open but absolutely freezing and a well maintained tennis court which we used a couple of times. Conil advertised a swimming pool (not open till mid-June) and a tennis court, which was in fact a Padle court. This, for those who don't know, is a hugely popular game in southern Spain; a mix of tennis, squash and real tennis. It is skilful and fast (I know tennis is too, just not the way we play) and I was made aware of the game a few years back at my tennis club. A young Spaniard was trying to introduce the game to England and was trying to build the first court in Huddersfield! I heard no more and I'm not sure whether Huddersfield was ready.

No unusual food to report this week but in the unlikely event of any of you finding yourselves in Conil, we can thoroughly recommend the El Palmero restaurant on Playa de Fontanilla. It looked nothing out of the ordinary from the menu outside but the food was very classy. The other two restaurants on the beach were mobbed with locals (probably 400 in 2 sittings on Sunday lunch) whereas El Palmeral had 3 or 4 tables taken and was the best of the lot.

Our next stop will be Bolnuevo on the Costa Calida. A bit more touristy than the last two places.

Buenos tardes,

J&P