We had originally intended to move on today, but are so comfortable and relaxed here that we decided to stay an extra day. Also we hadn’t yet managed to do the walk up the mountain or see the castle yet.
So we started the morning with the walk up to the Ermista Santa Marta. My heel was still hurting but I figured it would get better if I exercised it a bit. I’m glad I put my walking shoes on as the terrain was quite challenging in places – I nearly slipped over at one point. Not the best thing to be doing when you’re on the side of the mountain…! Anyway it was 226 steps up (I counted them on the way back down) together with rocky terrain and normal walking. There’s a sort of cactus grove on the way up, and, to be honest, not much to see when you get up there! And what there is is locked and you can’t get in.
So Calv decided that, as there was no roof, if he went up the side he’d be able to look down into it. Now. If you were an experienced rock climber this would be a good idea perhaps, but I had to beg him not to do it as I imagined him losing his footing, which wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d been on level ground… You get the picture. For once he listened to me! Only to try to scramble up a different way, only to abort that when I heard him mumbling that there were definitely snakes living in there…!
After a rest we set out on our bikes for the castle, which is signposted form the main road, but not at the road you need to turn off to get to it. So we spent 5 minutes cycling up and up, only to find a dead end! So glad of our electric bikes on this trip – we’d never have made it to the top of some of these hills without them. Calv videoed the trip back down from the castle (1 hand on the brake, the other holding his phone – luckily there were no cars coming when he got to the bottom and had to turn left, as it was the steepest bit and he couldn’t stop…)
We finally made it to the castle. Again worth seeing at 3 euros apiece. However it was lunchtime so, naturally, the café was just closing and so was the church, so we missed out on the church. Which did look pretty impressive, so we were a bit disappointed.
We needed some fruit and veg so stopped on the way home and loaded up the bikes. Then Calv decided to buy a 6 pack of 1ltr bottles of water. He secured them onto the back of his bike with one of our locks, and then forgot they were there and mounted his bike, knocking them sideways. I know, it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments, but it made me laugh!
I’ve finally done my ironing (outside though J ) and we’re now ready to look for our next site (Benidorm remember?!)
Will be sad to leave this site – even though I dreamt last night that we were overrun with some ‘battle re-enacters’ who wouldn’t let us leave…. Not sure what that was all about, I’m obviously getting too much sleep (averaging 8 ½ hours!!)
See you in Benidorm J xx
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