11th and 12 June, Lorca and Aguilas

Yesterday we took the bus inland to Lorca, a smallish unspectacular town about 45 minute’s drive from the coast. Like many of the towns in the region it has a Moorish fortress which is worth a visit, and a rich history dating back to the Romans, but we were completely astonished when we visited the towns two “Embroidery Museums”. (Stay with me, those of you who are already falling asleep!). In the 17^th Century, two religious societies in the town were granted Papal authority to walk their “Madonna’s” through the town over the Easter weekend. The “White” and “Blue” Societies are still competing to hold the most amazing spectacle today and the stands created along the town’s main streets seat 24,000 people. The religious theme of the pageants has expanded to include a bit of Roman and Egyptian (???), which means there are huge floats, (carried by up the 120 people), exhibitions of horsemanship and four horse chariots are driven through the town at full speed. If its anything like as good as the video it must be amazing! Oh and back to embroidery, everyone who takes part are dressed the most astonishing hand embroidered costumes, some up to 80 years old. The societies still employ people today to keep the skills alive and the costumes coming.

Today has been quite boring by comparison, cleaning and doing jobs like making a boarding ladder to make it easier to get off the back of the boat.

More from the "Blue" exhibition, the hood of the costume represents the church spire.

More from the "Blue" exhibition, the hood of the costume, though rather scary to look at, represents the church spire.

The "white" costumes are supposed to reflect church different architectural styles

The societies have their own churches, each with a huge amount of gold leaf.

In the Mediterranean you have to moor stern or bow to the pontoon. Getting on and off has been a bit of a challenge for Wendy at times. We finally found a hardware shop selling ladders and got a few odd looks carrying our prize back to the boat. It will be OK when it's finished, all we need now is some wood to fill in the gaps.

7th to 10th June San Jose to Aguilas

The ongoing story of our time on the coast of Andalucia has been too much wind (rare), no wind (all too common), wind in the wrong direction (yep thats the rest of the time). With only 11 miles from an overnight anchorage to the port of Garrucha and with a good breeze in the wrong dirrection, we happily spent half a day sailing upwind, it made a change from the many hours of motoring. At least having days with no wind means we have enjoyed a couple of quiet nights at anchor and some lovely swims off the back of the boat.

This hotel, which looks like something from a James Bond film has apparently, like many properties in Spain been the subject of years of appeals in court; it was built without planning permission and now, all legal routes having been exhausted, will be demolished.

The beach at Garrucha, the very pleasant prom, like the beach goes on for miles.

This part of Spain is rich in minerals, lorries run non-stop to the dock at Garrucha to load these ships with what looks like gypsum and chrushed rock. Despite the noise and dust its still a pleasant town.

Wendy after a swim off the back of Cara Mara

Flat calm sunset after another day without wind.

2nd to 6th June Almerimar to San Jose

We had enjoyed Almerimar, though it is a slightly strange mixture of pleasant resort and abandoned grand plan; right up that is until Wendy’s new folding bike was stolen on Friday night. We had grown careless in the quiet place where nothing much seemed to happen and left the bike (with 2 locks) chained to a lamppost next to our stern. Mistake, as Wendy was awake at 2am when it disappeared. You live and learn. We spent half of the following day explaining the situation to the police via the interpretation app on a mobile phone.

The rest of the day took us to Almeria, which under the Moors was the most important port in Spain. The town grew immensely rich, though little remains of the glories except the Alcazaba, which looks down on the town. Although its buildings were once said to rival those in Granada little evidence now remains within the still impressive walls.  The commercial harbour does not welcome yachts but was dominated by an oil platform.

On Sunday we left Almerimar to go round the Cabo de Gata onto the Coasta Blanca and into the tiny marina at San Jose where Wendy impressed the locals by reversing Cara Mara into the only available parking spot. San Jose is a surprisingly pleasant little holiday village, a far cry from an almost, wanabe place like Almerimar. The best bit of being here was that on Cabo de Gata you can visit the saline lake Salinas, and see the flamingos.

The wall of Alcadaba were built by the Moors to provide a palace and fortress and to surround the town. After the christian re-conquest the fortress was extended with round towers to withstand cannon.

Little remains of the once stunning Moorish architecture and gardens

Cabo de Gata is impressive, dark volcanic rock, with almost white intrusions .

Add captionThe tiny marina at San Jose

Salinas, the lake is still used for extraction of salt

Hundreds of Greater Flamingos, (they really are pink), make the journey to Salinas well worth while.

28th May to 1st June Motril and Almerimar

We spent a very windy weekend at Motril in the very welcoming Yacht club. Dave finally worked out one of the reasons the bilge under our engine was getting so wet. This has been happening since we left Lisbon and it turns out that an innocuous looking pipe under the engine is actually the pipe for the pressure relief valve for our hot water tank.

Cara Mara was not behaving herself on the 37 mile motor from Motril to Almerimar, not only wasn’t the autohelm working but the gas alarm went off, causing us to switch off the gas and forego any thoughts of cups of tea (actually not a problem in the heat). When we arrived Wendy was muttering about selling the boat!

Luckily we are well within our schedule to meet our next crew member Biddy and Almerimar is a quiet and fairly cheap marina so we have decided to stay put, get a few jobs done, order a new valve from the UK and rent a car for a bit of land exploration.

The good news after a couple of days of investigation is that the autohelm problem was nothing worse than a loose wire, the apparent gas leak was a bit of oil on the sensor and the internet should deliver a new valve in a few days.

This area of spain grows much of europes winter vegetables. Every bit of flat and not so flat ground is covered in plastic. Not too pretty.

The offending pressure relief valve is under our bed but discharges under the engine.

The Sailing club at Motril has this rather splendid pendulum set up to indicate the direction of the wind