Gibraltor & The Costa Del Sol March 98
We arrived in Sebta(Ceuta - in Spanish) after Fly over Gibraltor1500kms of cycling Morocco and then found it was more difficult to leave Morocco than to arrive or to get into Sebta, mind you the Moroccan police, army etc, love to play power games, like the one where they left yet another road block (we'll inspect your bus for contraband) sign in front of a pot hole on the road so that Mary, negotiating her way around it, hit the pot hole, covered by the sign, and went crashing over the handlebars only to land in someone's pottery stand, not too much damage though. Sebta was a ball, with fantastic shops, cheap prices and a real toilet! We then took the Transmederterainien ferry to Spain, to a city 13km from Gibraltor, It would not be right to have a direct ferry service direct to Gibraltor as the Spanish, to spite open borders, will try to ignore that Gibraltor exists. We then spent the afternoon cycling 20km around to the rock and well, here we are!
The proverbial Gibraltor monkey from our walk to the top of the rock, and Spain past the airport,the border was only opened up in 1987, how stupid the whole history has been, the Spanish are still angry and the Brits still arrogant about the rock.
It wouldn't be complete without showing good old British guns, would it. Mary has discovered Monkeys, at last!
Leaving Gibraltor and on towards the Costa. Lots of tempting apartments by the beach, many billboards advertising the huge Hipermecardo's (supermarket) they have here. Tractors clean up the beaches clearing debris and drift wood. Mary is eyeing up the real estate and thinking "would I like to live here"?
200km's of beaches drenched in the sun, then Rob tries to avoid a tree stump on the busiest motorway in Europe and the peddle gets caught so "bang crash" Rob goes splat onto the motorway at 50kph, Cars stopped to help and drove us back to a motorcamp in Fuengirola where for ten days we met lovely people from all over Europe while the recovery process took place. We even carry our own clothes line and pegs. Finally we take off ten days behind schedule but who cares, and cycle west to the border with Portugal, observing many roadside markets that actually sell these statues.
Spain Again..(where the rain falls mainly on the plains) Not!
Well we finally left Portugal where we spent 10 days more than we planned due to the bad weather. Cycling Portugal is not recommended as it scared both of us a number of times with the amount of heavy traffic on such small and inadequate roads which rather than be rebuilt are merely fixed by dumping a load of tar to fill the pot holes but not smoothing it out. Getting to the north east of Portugal was a battle and one that left us exhausted to the point that when at the border with Spain we had heard about the massive traffic going through to France and vice versa so with the fact of being behind schedule and being slightly fed up with the traffic, we were lucky enough to be able to catch a bus through to France.
Entering the border into Spain is no drama as with all of the EU countries they are pretty much open now, just some police to check things out. Went to the loo at the Frontier cafe opposite this valley with the river as the border. Frantic building of yet more motorways taking place in Spain.
The weather was pretty terrible along the north western part of Spain so not many photos and long stretches of nothing.