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| The sub-tropical Zahora beach |
A few minutes after posting this photo an American friend enquired if we had flown to Florida. I think he was joking, but where we are staying does have a bit of a sub tropical vibe. Zahora is not really a village as such, but a cluster of villas, hostels and restaurants connected by a confusing tangle of narrow lanes behind a stunning white sand beach replete with wafting palms.
There is so much to like here. The campsite is great, though situated a kilometre or so from the beach in pine woods. The pitches are large, each with water and emptying points. The sanitary blocks are new and beautifully maintained and it's got a big pool complete with a seriously under-worked life guard. The place is as much a bungalow park as a campsite which means it has enough off-season customers to keep a small supermarket going all year. It's a Coviran franchise so the prices are low and it is well stocked.
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| Camping Pinar San José - one of the best out of season sites we have stayed in. |
Often it is not the practicalities of a place but its quirks which stick in the memory. In this regard Camping Pinar San José will forever, for us, be the place of the pig. We had hardly settled into our pitch by the perimeter fence next to the woods, when we heard a snuffling sound. Somewhat incredulously, Gill observed, "Pete, I think I can see a pig." Indeed, this was no hallucination; mooching about beneath the umbrella pines was a large black pig. He was very handsome and extremely sociable, visiting us morning and evening. Gill's pig pictures on Whatsapp and Instagram proved a bit of a hit; he became a well loved pig.
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| Our porcine companiom |
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| quite tame |
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| and partial to carrots |
Zahora is only about three kilometres or so from the protected dunes and coastal hills that form Cabo Trafalgar. Aside from the historical interest for British visitors, the littoral is very interesting. The Cape itself is a sandstone islet now permanently moored to the shore by two sand bars. The information board called this a 'tombola' which I suppose must be Spanish for isthmus. There were waders to watch in the shallow reedy lakes that have formed in the hinterland and a well trodden route over the soft sand up to the handsome lighthouse on the Cape itself. It's not a long walk, but a hard slog because of the soft sand.
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| The windswept bay of Trafalgar |
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| The Capo Trafalgar lighthouse, and surrounding dunes and salt flats |
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| A rather handsome ediface |
Most of the information boards give details of the areas ecological significance. One near the lighthouse commemorates the battle which we all learned about in school. It is interesting how key historical moments in one country's history can be mere footnotes in that of their neighbours. This seems to be the case here, as with Spanish Armada, which is little known outside British classrooms, a mere footnote in the Spanish history of the later 16th Century.
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| The information board explained the battle tactics. |
Anyway, these days what Trafalgar is famous for is not early 19th Century naval history, but kite-surfing. Like nearby Tarifa, its southwest aspect, facing the Atlantic, makes Trafalgar bay a windy place, perfect for the sport. It gives the locality a young, laid back atmosphere. As we unlocked the bikes in the late afternoon to pedal back to the van, people were heading towards the beach bars beside Trafalgar's beach parking. The Spanish indie rock that had been pulsing from the bars earlier had been replaced by chillout, and the volume cranked down a notch or two. All surefire signs of a sunset cocktail scene.
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| The kite surfers give the place a youthful vibe. |
If the kite-surfing culture harks back to the nineties, then its adherents' dress sense evokes the 'Summer of Love' or at least a sanitised version of it you might find in Vogue photo-shoot complete with a souk backdrop. The four young things ahead of us in the checkout queue conformed to the stereotype so completely that it was tempting to glance around in the hope of spotting the camera crew lurking in the shadows. Essential to the look for both sexes was a smooth unblemished skin, uniformly tanned, and long hair carefully styled into dishevelled ringlets. The men sported prophetic beards, designer shades, and leather wide-brimmed hats. The girls were somewhat wafty, in voluminous hareem pants, loose tee shirts personalised with ineptly drawn cartoon cats, and ethnically styled silver jewellery adorning wrist, ankle, earlobes and neckline. One presumes that it is essential to remove the this before kite-surfing in the interests of maintaining buoyancy.
They were a startling bunch; men with girls certainly, as there seemed to be an age difference of at least ten years between the sexes. Their changed state of consciousness was equally remarkable, I don't think l have seen anyone so obviously spaced-out before 10am since 1975. The reason I had time to take in the details was that the simplest of actions, like paying for the random products in their basket took, even with a collective effort, a very long time. When it came to paying, after an ineffectual attempt to settle up by one of the guys, the most silver encrusted girl withdrew her purse very slowly from a fringed shoulder bag, unzipped it with difficulty, and peered at the coins in its depths with a thought bubble drifting above her head that read, "Wow! coins, they're so shiny." She had a lovely face, but fixed in a pout, and shared with her companions, to quote Kristy McColl's apt phrase, 'a far away look in the eyes '.
The joyous illusions of youth! Do I miss them? Perhaps becoming disillusioned is not entirely a bad thing. Maybe it is preferable to be a grey-haired realist and to value fact, rather than being enslaved by fashionable myths? Anyway, you can be a realist and still a dreamer. The two states are complimentary not contradictory. It's surprising how thought provoking a queue at the till can be if it's slow moving and the folks in front are drug- dazed.
In the afternoon we spent a few hours at the beach. The wind had dropped a little and the sheltered spot we found became pleasantly warm. I managed to have a swim after chickening out twice. The swell was considerable, and because the beach shelved steeply it had a worryingly strong undertow. Though I love swimming, these days I am not so strong as I was. I endeavoured to stay in my depth, but the height of the waves lifted me beyond it. I had one slight moment of concern when my toes could not reach the shingle and even though I was swimming towards the shore, Gill, sitting on the beach, seemed to be receding. The current was very fierce. The important thing at moments like this is not to panic. I changed tack and swam strongly in the lull between each wave and made for the shore diagonally; soon I was back in my depth and able to wade slowly ashore. "That was great!" I exclaimed as I reached for my towel, deliberately keeping the modifying adverb 'mostly' to myself.
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| A dream of a beach |
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| which we almost had to ourselves |
Afterwards we had a chat about the journey so far, 38 days travelled, almost 2500 miles covered, 23 different stopovers. We had planned a more leisurely trip, but mixed weather had driven us southwards far quicker than we envisaged. Maybe here was a good place to stop for a while, the beach was great, it was neither deadly quiet nor too crowded, it had a nice relaxed atmosphere, and good opportunities for walking in the coastal hills. Furthermore, Gill's birthday was in a couple of days. She had spied the menu of the beach side restaurant and deemed it 'interesting'. Now it conformed to all her birthday lunch criteria: well cooked food, a table overlooking the sea beneath a palm tree. We headed back to the bikes having decided to stay awhile.
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| The interesting restaurant which shut for the season before we could try it |
Now, the glitch, or to be accurate, two unrelated glitches that happened almost simultaneously. The first was simply bad luck. The restaurant had closed for the season. Yesterday's public holiday was clearly their last day, now the place was shuttered for the winter and all the outside furniture cleared from the terrace overlooking the beach. Maybe there's somewhere else close by just as good, we conjectured as we unlocked the bikes.
It was Gill who first noticed the additional problem. The electrics on her bike would not work. It immediately became apparent why. Ebikes have heavy chunky batteries that are turned on and off with a key. This enables you to disable the battery when the bike is not in use and locks it to the frame. As we secure the bikes when parked with a chunky chain we don't as a rule remove the keys. However, in an act of vandalism or an inept attempt at theft the keys to both bikes had been removed. We were able to ride them back to the van as they will operate like ordinary push-bikes without the electrics, but are so weighty, that apart from on the dead flat, this is not practical. We have a fairly good idea which idiot landed us in this predicament. When we arrived at the beach a dodgy looking guy with two unleashed ugly looking bull mastiffs had been hanging about. He stood right next to me as l locked the bikes I thought he might want to say something, but could not speak English. In fact, I think he was casing the situation. The bikes are undamaged, but unlike on our previous two long trips, this time I did not pack the spare keys. So. they are unusable for now on, just 52kg of inert metal hanging off the rear bike-rack. It's very annoying. It changes what we can do as we use them to go to the shops as well as for trips out. It certainly has put the kibosh on staying here. The beach and nearby hiking trails require the ebikes to reach them. Tomorrow we will have to move, and find somewhere else for Gill's birthday meal.
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| The bikes trussed up and staying that way until Buxton - infuriating! |
Onwards yet again.
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