The last ten days have been very peculiar. We have spent all of it round and about the estuary of the Rio Guadiana, the river that forms the southern border between Spain and Portugal. No, we haven't developed a profound interest in the wading birds of Andalusia and the Algarve, we've spent most of the time trying to sort out getting my bike repaired.
The wheel is badly out of true, maybe it will need to be replaced, which will be costly as the electric motor is integrated into the rear hub. Fortuitously we knew a place in Isla Cristina that specialised in repairing electric bikes and scooters.
Moto Castro fixed my bike stand a couple of years ago. The place ieas little more than a 5 minute bike ride away, pushing it there took twenty minutes. It was a Friday, tomorrow is Andalusia Day, a regional public holiday, so the message from Moto Castro was to bring the bike back at 10am. on Monday and we'll see what we can do.
As Friday progressed the campsite filled up with young Spanish families taking the opportunity for a weekend at the beach to celebrate all things Andalusian. It perked up the usual moribund vibe of the place where the mores of Northern Europe's pernikity retirees predominate. We're fans of perky.
If we are going to end up without my we bike and forced to walk everywhere then Camping Giralda is not a bad place to be. Just across the road there are beautiful paths through the umbrella pine woods and over the dunes to the beach. Late February is a good month for the spring flowers and swathes of white broom.
The damage from winter storms was much worse here than in the Sherry Triangle. Walking towards town on the wooden walkway diversions were in place where the structure had been undermined. One of the wooden pavilions was severely damaged, most of the roof ripped off by the severe gales.
Wooden lifeguard towers line the long beach every few hundred metres. I've photographed the one nearest the campsite many times because its blue and white paintwork looks really jolly against the deep blue sea and sky in sunny weather. So I was very sad to see the structure toppled. I hope it gets restored.
A few years ago, for no particular reason whatsoever, I decided to take a black and white photo every Monday for a year, then write an accompanying haiku. The wooden tower featured in the photo taken on Monday 6th February 2023. The haiku was meant to celebrate the structure not memorialise it. Sadly 'nothing lasts for long,' as Joni sings.
As instructed I delivered the bike to Moto Castro at 10am on Monday and returned to pick it up at 7pm in the evening. It was not good news. According to the mechanic the spokes were not adjustable and therefore the bike was unrepairable. It would need a new rear wheel and that would have to wait until we returned home.
I was unconvinced by this. Next day I upended the bike and attempted to tighten the spokes using a small wrench. Quite clearly the spokes were adjustable, but I lacked the right tool and the know-how to do a decent job. Luckily Gill had been on the case too. She had phoned a different bike repair place in the nearby town of Ayemonte. The place had positive reviews on Google, so after hanging about in Isla Cristina for a week to no avail we headed a dozen kilometres or so to the area autocaravanas run by Ayemonte marina.
We've visited the outskirts of the town before, regularly to fill-up with LPG and one time to get an oil change at Euromaster. Judging by industrial estates on the town's outskirts I had presumed the place was quite workaday.
In fact the town centre and newish marina are stylish, it feels more prosperous than nearby Isla Cristina or the Portuguese town of Vila Real de St Antonio directly across the water.
Once more we trundled the damaged bike to the repairers. The mechanic was cautiously optimistic that he could repair it, but it would not be ready until Monday - three days hence. The problem occurred ten days ago, now we are at least three days away from getting it fixed, that's almost a fortnight of faffing about, quite a chunk out of our seven week trip. We will need to scale back our plans, certainly the idea I had of staying at Aranjuez for a few days and getting the train into Madrid to visit the Prado seems out of the question now. Las Meninas will have to wait until next year.
Rather than sit tight in the Ayemonte marina for the next few days we decided to hop over the Guadiana and spend a couple of nights in Portugal. We remember our visit to Tavira fondly and have attempted to return a couple of times. Since we were last there the place has developed a big area autocaravanas near the Continente shopping centre. The problems is it has been full whenever we've tried use it. Judging by the reviews the place seems much loved by long stayers from the Bundersrepublik and La Republique making places for people touring about in short supply. Recently the place has put an 'available spaces' counter on the front page of its website. We checked first thing it and it showed seven available places. Tavira is about a twenty minute drive from where we are staying, we decided that we had a fair chance of finding a place.
However exiting the Ayemonte marina aire proved more challenging than we anticipated. The place has a curious double barrier system. It acts like lock gates ensuring vans can only enter or exit singly. Everything is controlled by a registration number recognition system and you pay using a touch screen; though it is multi-lingual, it all remains a tad gnomic.
We noticed yesterday that from time to time a gaggle of motorhomers gathered by the payment machine, joined occasionally by men in hi-viz. We presumed they were municipal workers summoned by the helpline number inscribed in big print above the touchscreen.
It was no different when we came to leave. While I sat in the cab waiting in the service point queue Gill hopped out to join the pay machine party. It consisted of two confused French people, a very jolly municipal worker in hi-viz and Gill. Hi-viz man was on his mobile attempting to explain the problem the French couple were having to a colleague on the other end of the phone in the tourist office. I watched as impressively Gill took charge, like any trained ex-primary school teacher would. The hi-viz man handed the phone to Gill who communicated with the woman in the office who spoke English. Gill translated what she said to the French couple. The issue was soon resolved, the machine was completely buggered and Hi-viz man was instructed to raise the barriers manually and let all of us out without paying. We headed across the Guadiana to Portugal.
An hour later we were settled into Tavira Motorhome Park. Once you are here why the place has so few spare pitches becomes obvious. Most guests are here for weeks rather than a couple of days. I can see why, the place has spacious plots, four well designed service points and is designed with wide enough roadways to make manoeuvring easy even in a large motorhome. The sanitary blocks are small - serviceable but basic. I think the assumption is that most people will use their on-board facilities.
If you were to spend a few weeks here I am not sure what you would do. The main activities include sitting in the sun reading a book - hardback tomes preferred to Kindles. Lunch at the neighbours seemed popular too and afternoon boules afterwards if you happened to be a man and French. Amongst Teutonic males van polishing took the place of boules as a popular pastime. I noted some pretty snazzy looking gear, battery powered rotary brushes, telescopic poles that looked as if they might prove useful if you decided to take-up pole vaulting.
First prize has to go to the owner of a German plated Cathargo the size of removal truck. It was so spotlessly white that looking at it required Polaroids. However in the owner's eyes there was still work to be done. He opened the door of the copious rear garage, removed a telescopic ladder, extended it to its full 3m length, ascended it, rotary polisher in hand, then proceeded micro-clean the moho's roof. I looked at ours, it's a tad dusty and mud splattered around the wheel arches, in other words, to be British about it, 'not too bad'. Maybe I'm a slob, I can see the pleasure in settling down on a sunny afternoon with a good book, moho roof polishing - I don't think so!
Gill suggested we walk into town and find somewhere for a coffee and a cake. Better for the soul than sitting observing the neighbours as if the area autocaravanas was some kind of safari park for humans. It's little more than a kilometre from Tavira Motorhome Park into the town centre, but the route is not straightforward, through an industrial area, past the humongous Continente shopping centre and across a couple of busy roads. However the old river front with it's Roman bridge is beautiful.
We found a cafe, had a coffee and two different sorts of cake - one was a bean cake, a local speciality.
Then we moved on to the nearby gelateria. Ok, but it's not like in Italy we concluded. I guess we could have carried on up towards the oldest part of town near the church, but we headed back to the van instead.
The following day we were even less intrepid, a trip to the Continente hypermarket was all we managed. That being said it's over five weeks since we shopped anywhere bigger than a local supermarket so we wandered the brimming aisles like kids in a sweetshop.
At the moment I feel lacking in motivation, the problem with my bike has been getting me down. Moreover, both of us have been suffering with a virus for what feels like weeks. It's difficult to know whether we've succumbed to two viruses one after another or one horrible one that keeps recurring with different symptoms. While we were on the ferry I went down with a classic fluey cold virus and duly passed it on to Gill. A couple of weeks ago I felt fluey again then developed a rash on my torso legs and arms. Gill went down with it too, but thankfully became slightly less spotty than me. Anyway, whatever is going on is bloody annoying because it's no fun travelling when you are feeling unwell.
What is happening in the world at the moment too is depressing. Just when you think Donald Trump cannot become any more unhinged he provokes even more mayhem and chaos. Who knows where US and Israeli attempts to achieve regime change in Iran by airpower alone will end up. So far they've managed to destabilise the entire Middle East and provoke a worldwide energy crisis, and they've only been at it for a week.
We've lived through many moments of uncertainty but this one does feel different. In my lifetime I've witnessed many power-crazed autocrats attempts to stir up strife - Amin, Gaddafi, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden - However none of them possessed the launch codes for the world's biggest nuclear arsenal nor was 'Commander in Chief' of a military whose annual budget of $997 billion is greater than the sum total of the budgets of the next nine country's defence spending combined.
It doesn't help that we have lots of time on our hands to think about these things. When we were juggling family life with our demanding jobs then our priorities were different, life was busy and stressful, but there was an upside, we simply didn't have the time to become morose about the state of humanity.
We had to vacate our place in the Tavira Motorhome Park by 10.15am. These days we regard that as an early start. We were not due to go back to the bike repair place until 6pm. It's amazing how much time you can fritter away just doing this and that. We parked up yet again at Ayemonte marina. By the time we'd wandered around the town centre, then returned to the Superco to buy a bottle of Fino and a Manzanilla sherry then returned to the van to doom scroll the news apps to check if WW3 had started, it was time to check on the bike repair.
My bike was raised on a stand, the shop owner stood somewhat seriously beside it. Speaking Spanish into his phone then showing me the Google English translation on screen he explained that it was not a perfect repair because the rim had been damaged, but the wheel was straight enough to ride safely. He only charged us €30 euros. He seemed quite touched by how pleased we were. I will need to have the wheel replaced when we get home, but for now we can continue to use our bikes which is all we wanted.
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