A Day by the Pool

There are some days on holiday that sound impressive when you describe them afterwards. Long walks and new scenery. Training for the annual Ironman triathlon. Spectator training, obviously. And then there are days like today, where your main achievement is shuffling your sun bed sideways to stay in the shade. Madam takes sun bed acquisition … Continue reading A Day by the Pool →

A Day at the Beach

The Ironman circus is finally packing up. Yesterday Puerto del Carmen was full of road closures, nervous relatives clutching cowbells and frighteningly fit people wheeling bicycles worth more than a Ford Fiesta. Today the temporary pavilions are starting to be dismantled piece by piece and all the bikes have disappeared. Presumably they are now being … Continue reading A Day at the Beach →

Ironman

The annual Ironman Lanzarote arrives with all the subtlety of a military invasion. One day Puerto del Carmen is full of people in football shirts drinking cheap lager, and the next it’s swarming with terrifyingly fit humans carrying bicycles that cost more than our annual holiday budget. It’s a big thing here, or should I … Continue reading Ironman →

Pictures

I'm putting a few random pictures from Lanzarote (and other places) on Instagram. You don't need an account there to see them: https://www.instagram.com/gap_year_oap?igsh=eGh6cTAydTM4NWV0&utm_source=qr

Puerto del Carmen

Madam isn’t up to the beach today, so we have a short walk after breakfast before heading down to the hotel pool. We are just getting comfortable when there's a loud crack from the other side of the pool as an extremely large man lowers himself onto a sun bed. The front end gives way … Continue reading Puerto del Carmen →

Lanzarote

I am lying on a sun-bed and a stray oleander petal drifts past my foot. Someone jumps in the pool and I am briefly splashed. Tall, skinny palm trees tower over the pool. A single cypress with a knobbly trunk stands guard at the hotel entrance. The sky is a clear, pale blue. There is … Continue reading Lanzarote →

Gibraltar

“I want to see the monkeys,” Madam tells me one morning. We are still in Málaga, and I don’t even know if it has a zoo, or indeed any wild animals larger than a pigeon with attitude. “No, not in a zoo. In Gibraltar.” Gibraltar and I have something of a history. That sounds like … Continue reading Gibraltar →

Malaga Too

At the base of the Alcazaba fortress sits the remains of a Roman theatre, which is impressive not only for its age but for the fact that everyone managed to lose it for several centuries. Built during the reign of Augustus, it was used for public performances until the 3rd century, then buried, forgotten, and … Continue reading Malaga Too →

Torremolinos

All I know about Torremolinos I learned from Monty Python: "You sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keep singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos', and complaining about the food, 'Oh! It's so greasy, isn't it?'" I dug up a couple more cultural references from the 1960s and 1970s: "A scandalous place where drugs and … Continue reading Torremolinos →

Malaga

Thursday Storm Goretti is blowing outside our bedroom window. I can hear the glass creaking in the wind. Sixty-mile-an-hour gusts are forecast overnight, and the temperature is hovering just above zero. I’m huddled under the covers, wondering whether I should go and fetch another blanket. What is it with naming storms nowadays? It used to … Continue reading Malaga →