We
were planning to Mijas on 22 July. It is a traditional old Andalucian white
town on the hillside just above La Cala de Mijas. Perhaps a bit of a tourist
trap but we thought well worth a visit. Sadly though we got a message from home
that one of our immediate family had died suddenly.That, of course, changed
everything. The priorities became to find a safe location to leave BV that had
space for her in the high season and then to arrange flights back to the UK.
It’s
amazing what you can arrange from a café with wifi. Less than 48 hours from
getting the sad news whilst anchored off a beach, BV was safely moored up and
we were back at our home in the UK.
The
trip to Mijas will therefore just have to wait. To brighten up this blog entry
though I've included some library images from the internet so you can get an
idea of why we want to visit Mijas. One for next time we are visiting our
friends.
There is
no marina at La Cala de Mijas so it doesn’t get many visiting yachts but there
is a lovely beach and we stayed at anchor just outside the yellow buoys which
mark out the swimming area. The reason we picked out La Cala de Mijas to visit
is that some really good friends from right back at the beginning of my career
have a villa very close to the beach and the timing worked out perfectly
with us travelling east in BV just as our friends were in the villa for their summer holiday. A vague plan hatched in March had come to fruition!
We spent
several days at anchor enjoying the town with its cafés, iceceam shops
and restaurants, plus, because there is a ferretería (hardware store) very close to the beach, we also took the opportunity to get a new gas bottle. One had run out whilst we were
in Gibraltar but Camping Gaz is significantly cheaper in Spain than in
Gibraltar, or indeed the UK, so we waited to replace it. Must be my small amount of Scottish blood making itself felt.
We also spent some time in the villa enjoying lovely long warm evenings by the pool,
glass in hand with the aromas of the barbecue wafting past as we chatted away catching up. We planned to sail on Sunday and on Monday visit Mijas, which
is a traditional old Andalucian 'white-washed town’ located on the hillside
above us.
When
Sunday 21 July came around we wondered where to sail to for the day. The
beach at La Cala de Mijas is great but our friends had swum from BV there and
they wanted to have a go at sailing. We therefore sailed east a short
distance towards Fuengirola. It’s largely a major tourist hotel and beach spot and
so, to make things more interesting, we anchored with the view of the
mediaeval Moorish fortress to look at rather than the hotels further down the
beach.
Almost as
soon as the anchor had dug into the sand, BV was transformed into a diving and
swimming platform. The children’s enthusiasm was infectious and before long
everyone was doing their best to outperform each other leaping into the water.
It was great fun
and only stopped for a picnic lunch in the cockpit.
After
lunch, as you can see from the picture on the right, the tricky question of how
to deal with a troublesome elder brother was also solved – chain him to the
dinghy!
The
sail back was into wind so we had a lovely time gently beating backwards and
forwards before dropping anchor again at our spot off La Cala de
Mijas for sundowners.
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“Hi Nige!!!”
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For the family photo above I suggested they say ‘Cheese’ but
they just shouted “Hi Nige!!!” (a chum who lives in their village back home).
After a long and very enjoyable
sundowners we found that we had finally put the world to rights and it was time
to employ child slave labour to row everyone back to the beach.
As Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s
classic The Wind in the Willows said,
“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply
messing about in boats”.
