Among the convalescents

It's day six for us at Camping Giralda. I think I may be losing it a bit....

On the whole we don't stay in one place for as long as a week. The exception was last autumn when Sarah and Rob joined us. They had work to do on-line so it made sense to stay put, and anyway the late summer sun made it warm enough to go swimming or cook-up a feast outside. In the winter, even this far south, days are short and the majority of the time though it is comfortable enough to get out and do stuff, it is not really warm enough to laze about.

This does not stop our fellow inmates from trying, either by sitting in the sun earnestly reading while swathed blankets or, more spectacularly, ignoring the fact that the afternoon temperature that hovers around the mid-teens has a certain piquancy due the the northerly airstream, stripping down to minuscule Speedos to sprawl in the pallid sunshine like a recently butchered pig. The Dutch chap next door must have been doing this for weeks. He is now crimson all over. His appearance brought to mind Professor Cox's description of the final phases of stellar evolution when heavenly bodies expand massively, taking on a dull orangy-red pallor, then becoming torpid and emit little energy.

At least at the weekend the site gets a bit livelier when scores of Spanish families turn up to occupy tiny caravans, each extended by awnings and dining marquees. Sadly come late Sunday afternoon they have gone and much of the site reverts to resembling an abandoned transit camp, a zone of sadly flapping tarpaulin.

Really I can't be doing with sites where seasonal pitches predominate. It's true when we arrived I did feel I needed to have a break from driving. Gill discovered that the site had a discount - if you stay for a week you only pay for six nights. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not that there is anything wrong with either Camping Giralda or Isla Cristina, I can understand why both are attractive to northern Europeans seeking an affordable place in the sun during the dark days of winter. I know it's my problem that I find a period of enforced relaxation slightly disturbing, as if I have been instructed on medical grounds not to do stuff for the good of my health, or I am waiting inexplicably for something to happen. A favorite painting by Edward Hopper came to mind:

Surely this has to be the greatest evocation ever of the ominous nature of boredom, how if you find yourself anticipating nothing, death stares you in the face. 

We have tried to do stuff, I didn't spend the whole time observing the neighbours and becoming gloomy. It was great to see our Swedish friends Svenerik and Maria who live here during the winter. Then on Sunday we cycled along the via verde across the Marismas de Isla Christina towards Ayamonte. The light was heavenly.

Yesterday we walked through the umbrella pines behind the dunes then back along the wide beach. It was empty and beautiful. The shells you get on the Atlantic shore are bigger and more spectacular than in the Mediterranean. 

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However, if a stroll along an unremarkable beach and daily visits to Mercadona become the outstanding moments of the day, then it probably does mean you have exhausted the delights of a particular place. 

I think Gill sensed I was heading for a slump so suggested we headed into town for lunch. Sadly it is low season and both the tapas place that she fancied in the town centre and the fish restaurant near the docks that I had spotted as getting good reviews on Tripadvisor were closed. I suppose we did get the opportunity to cycle around a lot of Isla Cristina's side streets before we ended up back at Mercadona shopping for a very late lunch back at the van.  

Today's overcast skies seemed to say, 'time to move on'.  The bikes are loaded on the back, outside furniture packed up, pitch tidied and rubbish duly disposed of responsibly. 

Tomorrow we are driving 120kms west, as far as we can go in fact before falling off the bottom left-hand corner of Europe. The west coast of the Algarve and Alentajo is where surfers and backpackers go, well beyond the concreted over bit that features in Winter Sun brochures. In Sagres dreadlocked drop-outs and svelte youths in wetsuits out-number wrinkly golfers. Hopefully it will be less deadly than here. We are hoping for a good fish restaurant, epic geology, a bit of big wave watching and endless entertainment provided by over optimistic but beautiful looking twenty-somethings falling-off garish bits of carbon-fibre in the wild Atlantic swell.