Castillo de San Ramón

Well we had the car so decided as part of our trip to go and visit some friends from two winters ago down in Almerimar. It worked out well the drive from Gib up took a while but the little Fiat 500 that we got from Europecar went well. Our first evening was spent with Jane and Dave eating a home cooked delicious curry and doing a lot of chatting. We caught up on the local gossip and heard about future plans and discussed meeting up in the summer on their home turf, can’t wait. Friday we met Julie and Phil, only just they were off that evening to Ecuador, Galapagos and then the Caribbean, it’s a hard life. After that a bit of Boule now I warned the other players that we were rubbish only having played the plastic beach version, only to find John was pretty good. The men trounced the ladies, before retiring to Mario’s for drinks and Tapas. I attended a 1:1 Pilates reformer session in the evening before we headed back to Mario’s for the Yachties get together. This was all new faces so introduced ourselves and heard some more great sailing stories. Saturday and off to the yard to see Debbie and Simon and what work they had done to their Asian 40, an ex-drug boat they had bought while we were there last time. The progress was impressive they were all moved in but obviously they were still improving things as they went, lots of hard work and lateral thinking but she was looking good. Hope they manage to pop in to Guernsey later this year to catch up, we’ve offered free accommodation and our old cabin lights as incentives. Saturday evening was the Galley Quiz, it used to be the Leo’s Quiz but the operators have moved to a new locale, great night and questions pitched perfectly so you could get most with just a couple to isolate the really clever buggers. Our team was joint second, pretty good we thought. Sunday morning and we were already at Mercadona for the 10am walk, the weather was perfect and we all headed off to Cabo de Gato, Las Negras for a sunny stroll, with a lot more chatting mostly to Mike Ken and Gail but also some of the people we had met at the Yachties Get together.Sadly the weather was so good that all the locals were out as well so there was nowhere to get a beer and Tapas at the end but that didn’t spoil things. Sunday afternoon and evening we were with Debbie and Simon again first at theirs for beer and tapas then Algarbe for more tapas. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the little dishes, delicious. On Monday i just had time for another Pilates session, well €10 for an hour on the reformer was such a good deal, before checking out and Coffee morning before a leisurely drive back to the airport.
We are shattered that’s more socialising than we have done in total since leaving Levkas in April. Time to go back to the boat and relax and recover which is good as I seem to have picked up a horrible head cold.Read more