Eastwards, ever Eastwards
08 May 2007 | Rota
Wed 2nd May. 2 new albums in photo gallery.
Woke this morning to howling wind, overcast skies and driving rain, Lizzie sitting in saloon with hot water bottle attempting to treat belly-ache. It's all been a dream and we never got any further than Trebeurden. Look out of window - not Trebeurden, it's Rota in the Bay of Cadiz. You know, almost the same latitude as North Africa. Weather's beautiful in UK & Jersey apparently.
Bastards.
Never mind, where was I? Ah yes, Ayamonte. We decided to go up the river Guardiana to the twin villages of Alcoutim (Portuguese) and Sanlucar (Spanish), about 25 miles inland.
Having successfully negotiated getting a 12 metre mast under the suspension bridge, and avoided the shallows (just) in the uncharted river, we anchored in the middle of the river, just upstream of the two towns. Just as we were congratulating ourselves on our immaculate pilotage in getting our 1.65 metre draft up the river a sodding great 200 foot cruise boat trogged round the corner, executed a nifty little 180 degree turn and moored up at Alcoutim.
Bastards.
The countryside was beautiful, and there was even a beach at Alcoutim on a tributary of the river. Really weird - sand, cafe, picnic tables, beach huts, blue flag, the lot. Mind you, they must need it as it gets unbearably hot there in the middle of the summer.
Things to do in the middle of the countryside:
1 - Sit in cockpit, savour pervasive smell of orange blossom and listen to various bird and frog calls which rise to a crescendo in the evening. Very bucolic. There was a puzzling sound which at first we thought was a bird call and thought 'how charming'. Then as time passed we realised how regular it was and decided it wasn't a bird call at all, just one of those electronic alarm that go off all the time. It instantly switched from the 'charming' category to 'bloody irritating'.
Then it stopped being regular and moved around, so we decided it was a bird after all and it reverted to the 'how charming' psychological bracket. Mind you, if it keeps that up all bloody night......
2 - Worry about whether anchor will drag in strong river current and carry the boat careering downriver bagatelling of the other poor unfortunates downstream. Set anchor watch alarm and depths alarm and check frequently throughout the night. The echo sounder gave us depth and current flow, but gave us some peculiar (and worrying) readings until we realised that some of the info was in fact small flies congregating on the screen having been attracted by the illuminated display.
Bastards.
3 - Go for walks. Excellent - see photographs.
4 - Deploy huge range of anti mosquito measures, including zapper lights, toxic sprays, swats and chemical diffusers.
5 - Unsuccessfully search for antihistamine cream to treat multitudinous bites from mosquitoes attracted by the zapper light.
6 - Have lunch in riverside bar/restaurant run by a bunch of English Hairy Bikers. Very good, but somewhat bizarre.
7 - Attempt to buy produce in the only shop on the Portuguese side. Look at selection of a carrot, 3 bottles of 70 centimo white wine, 2 potatoes, a bottle of bleach and little else. Select a few items from the sparse offerings and wait expectantly at the till. Keep smiling at assistants who are engaged in vigorous and earnest conversation. Attempt to engage aforementioned assistants by ineffectual hand gestures, and cranking up the smiles to a manic rictus. Decide that only explanation is a warp in the laws of physics which has endowed us with a cloak of invisibility and transferred us to a parallel dimension.
Finally hand over exorbitant amount requested for pathetic offerings to po-faced woman who instantly returns to the earnest conversation without so much as an acknowledgement of our hypocritical thanks and good wishes for the prosperity of her business enterprise.
8 - Unexpectedly meet up with Pete and Lucia from 'Fair Grace', whom we met in Northern Spain and hadn't seen since Northern Portugal last August. Pete is a big, hairy proper sailor, and we fully expected them to be halfway across the Pacific by now. They spent the winter up the river, thus spending several thousand pounds less than we did over the same period.
Bastards.
Anchored a little further downriver for one night and then back to Ayamonte for a couple of days where we once again met Dick & Ginger from 'Alchemy'. Then on to Mazagon for one night at anchor just outside the channel carrying bloody great freighters and carriers upriver to Huelva. Managed to avoid being run down in our sleep by judicious use of riding light.
From Mazagon it was on to Rota where we currently languor. Apart from today the weather's been fine. Rota is a very characterful old town which manages to support a significant tourist industry without surrendering its soul to it.
Bumped into Dick and Ginger again, who persuaded us to go to a concert of 'The Magic Flute'. Bob enjoyed it, but Liz managed to tolerate it. Too much 'wailing bint' music for her taste.
Took the ferry over to Cadiz for the day, and were very glad we did. It's a lovely city with a faded grandeur reminiscent of aging Aristos (copyright 'The Chickens meander in the general direction of Turkey'). If you ever want to be pretentious and irritate people (you know, like the continuity announcers on radio three),use the Spanish pronunciation of Cadiz, which is like 'Cardiff', but ending in a 'th' sound rather than 'ff'.
We're now waiting to go to Barbate and then through the Straits to Gib as soon as the weather clears. We did try to get lots done yesterday, but failed to appreciate the significance of the date. It's one of the great ironies of life that May 1st is International Labour Day, and the Spanish drive this point home by ensuring that absolutely no labour is done whatsoever. Even some of the bars shut, one for the whole week.
And don't get me started on Spanish post offices.
I'm saving that for the next blog.