31st December 2016. Roquetas de Mar, Spain.
After a lot of umming and ahhing over whether we left the area completely or just drove up to the wild camping spot we’d seen the previous day we finally decided to give it a go.
We parked between two German vans, got our bikes out and went for a ride along the promenade towards the town of Aguadulce that we could see in the distance. Before we’d come to Roquetas I’d seen a review for a lovely walk into Aguadulce where there were interesting birds in the pools that were on either side of the path. I was very excited to discover that this was the path and even more excited when we found some interesting birds there (interesting for me because I’ve no idea what they were! There were wading birds, sea birds and some pretty little green birds that I’d never seen before) consequently it took rather a long time to pass that area as I kept stopping to take photos of them.
The ride became a little harder when, at one point, we had to cycle across a section of beach. We were pleased when we eventually arrived in Aguadulce. We cycled round to the pretty little marina where we stopped to recuperate under the guise of watching a boat coming in. It was lovely there and we were intrigued by a cylindrical building there. I love the unusual architecture in Spain. We whiled away some time exploring the area by the marina then made our way back along the coast where we stopped for a very nice meal at a little restaurant on the beach.
As we drove past a derelict building on the beach we stopped to watch a man, he had a box of meat open on his car bonnet which he was slicing then he walked back over to the building, took some bits of wire off the wall and then bent down to the ground, I couldn’t see what he was doing with the meat then, maybe he was drying it in the sun? Intriguing. After our nosey interlude we carried on along the cycle path.
When we arrived back to the area we were camping in we popped over to tell the English couple (who introduced themselves as Kelvin and Kay) that following their recommendation we were staying overnight too, Kelvin made the fatal error of inviting us in for a chat. They were very hospitable and we ended up chatting for ages.
They were both lovely, while we were chatting one of the German van owners came over to remind Kay and Kelvin that they were invited to see the New Year in with them and as we walked back to our van he invited us along too. We had a lovely chat with the two men in the group who spoke English, one of them helped me with my pronunciation of the few German words that I knew (two of the words I asked him to pronounce were kuchen and apfel, my pronunciation of apfel was obviously so bad that he only worked out what I was asking when we realised we both spoke a bit of French and he understood when I asked him to translate la pomme into German!). We all watched fireworks being set off in the hills near Aguadulce while we toasted the Spanish New Year with a glass of champagne and an hour later we all toasted the British New Year! What a great evening.