Route During Week Eight

We’re back on board Lionel but not back on the road quite yet.  We've decided to stay in Tavira to see in the new year.

It perhaps sounds like a funny thing to say, but coming back to Lionel is like coming home and we’re glad to be back in our beds, we sleep like logs.

We decided not to buy each other Christmas presents this year and instead, we’ve booked ourselves a table at a restaurant we’ve heard good things about - O Castelo - which is reputed to serve the best steaks in Tavira.

But before the blowout meal, we want to go to a Fado concert.  For the uninitiated, which until recently was us, Fado is a musical genre that is on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and its origins lie in Lisbon in the 1800s. Fado developed in the Alfama district, where Iberian, Brazilian, and African influences came together resulting in Fado.  Fado is traditionally performed by a solo singer and two guitarists, the songs are soulful and melancholic, filled with love and loss.

Luckily for us, Fado is regularly performed in Tavira and we are lucky enough to hear Sara Goncalves sing.  She is the winner of a national Fado award, prevailing out of 1300 contestants and she is superb. 

The guitar players are excellent too, one plays a traditional guitar and the other a Portuguese guitar which has twelve strings!

Dinner is delicious and we are amazed to discover that we have been in the restaurant for three hours!  We’ve still got plenty to talk about even after 25 years!

Cabanas is a village on the Ria Formosa a couple of kilometers to the east of Tavira and we cycle there through the salt pans.  It’s a gloomy day, quite misty and when we get to Cabanas the tide is out, it’s very atmospheric.  We leave the bikes and walk with the dogs along the beach as far as we can until the sand gives way to the marsh and we can go no further.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve and we’re looking forward to the fireworks.  We walk into town and it’s buzzing.  A massive stage has been erected overnight and the crowds are enjoying the band; the light stage show is really impressive.

Neither of us is a great lover of crowds and there is quite a bit of jostling for position to get a good view of the fireworks.  Height isn’t on Janette’s side but Nick helps bag her a good space, and the show is worth having stayed on in Tavira for.

We’ve enjoyed our time in Tavira, especially seeing our girls and our friend Gill but we are excited to be on the move again.

We’re not however able to move far.  Nick took the dogs to the vet a few days earlier who has recommended surgery for Millie as she has some lumps he’s not happy about - she’s booked in to be spayed and for the lumps to be removed.  So it’s back down the N125 (a road which we feel we know every inch of now!) to Loule.

Lidl has very kindly provided several spaces for motorhomes to use overnight so we go for this glamorous option!  There are even washing machines in the car park so Janette has the added treat of doing the laundry. 

This overnight spot is handy for the vet the next day and we return there to wait for news of Millie.

When we collect her Millie is very dizzy and her tummy has 24 stitches in it - ooh that must be sore.  The vet has removed as many of the lumps as he can in one go but she may need further surgery in a few months, depending on the biopsy results.  We leave with careful instructions for Millie’s care, plenty of medication, and a very much lighter wallet!

Millie will have to take it carefully for some time and the steps up to Lionel are steep so Nick sets about constructing a ramp for her to use and very successful it is too. 

That night we stayed around the back of Lidl which proved to be a serious mistake as unbeknownst to us we were right by the loading bays and activities started with gusto at about 4.30 a.m., needless tsayay we were up bright and early which is a good thing really as we are headed for Spain fleetingly, en route to Morocco.

The morning is foggy but brightens as we drive east.  Once back in Spain, we scan the horizon for the mountains but it’s not until some distance past Jerez that we see them looming up again in the distance.  

We’re headed for La Linea, as we want to visit Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory.  We stay in the aire at the marina overlooking the Rock in one direction and the luxury boats in the other - not bad. 

The next day we make the short walk to Gibraltar and it feels very strange to be so far from home and yet be in such a British place.  

We haven’t got a lot of time so we take a tour. The first stop is one of the Pillars of Hercules (the other is in Morocco).

The pillars guard the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and at this point, there are only 14 kilometers between Europe and Africa.  In Greek mythology, these pillars are said to have been created when Hercules smashed his way through the mountain separating the Med. and the Atlantic.

Next, it’s on to St. Michael’s Cave.  Awesome is an overused word but on this occasion it is entirely fitting.

The cave is immense and the stalactites and stalagmites form such intricate shapes that despite their huge size, they still somehow manage to look delicate. 

The experience is enhanced by clever lighting and music and the piece de resistance is Cathedral Cave, which forms a natural auditorium that can seat 100 people. 

In this cave is the Angel, a rock formation which when illuminated takes on the form of, you’ve guessed it -  an angel.  

We then test our nerves on the skywalk, a glass viewing platform 340m above the sea below. 

It’s near here that you will see the famous Barbary Macaques. There are currently about 300 monkeys split into five troops

Nick even had one sit on him and give him a patronizing pat on the head!

The final stop on our tour was the tunnel dug into the Rock during the Great Siege in the 1780s. 

This was Gibraltar’s first defensive tunnel but there are now a total of about 52 kilometers of tunnels inside the Rock, due to the tunnel network being massively increased before and during WW2 - amazing bearing in mind that Gibraltar is only 6.8 square kilometers. The various tunnels were named after English towns so that troops could find their way around.

Most of the debris dug out from the tunnels was used to extend the airport runway. The tunnels needed to contain all facilities to support 16,000 soldiers for up to 16 months in the case of Gibraltar falling under siege.

We wish we had more time to explore the city as what we did see we liked, maybe another time.

The walk between the border crossing and the city is memorable for the fact that you walk across the runway of Gibraltar International Airport; it made us laugh to think of the security crisis there would be if pedestrians were discovered crossing the runway at Gatwick.

We leave La Linea that evening and head to Algeciras, our launchpad for Morocco. There’s still a lot of bureaucracy to get through - ticket purchase, dog health check, animal export certificate - will all go without a hitch?  Find out next week!