Posted under People & Spain & Technology
The merfolk are puterless for the moment due to our lappy not being able to be started. We are visiting our friend in Finestrat (Not seen the Belgiun Rockstar yet) and am availing myself of their computer to update the blog and check mail.
I will hopefully get the puter fixed soon.
/love and peace
Mermy
Posted under Merlife & Spain & Travel & Weather
This cannot be right, it has poured down with rain since midnight last night and being a monday, everything is closed here. We have spent the day playing games, reading and watching dvd’s. Needless to say we would rather have been out on the seafront.
I am not going to get a drop of sympathy from you guys, but spare a thought for Rosie because we ran out of booze last night and cannot restock till tomorrow;)
Love and peace
Rosie n Mermy.
Met two really nice French lads today who were cycling through Benicasim en route to Senegal. Front and back panniers, tents and sleeping bags and huge grins on their tanned faces. They are going to be gone from their homes in Grenoble for three years, and when I said that was a long time to go to Senegal and back, they casually mentioned that they were getting a ship from Senegal to South America and then were going to cycle from Guyana to the cape and up to the USA before heading back to France.
It is a very exciting planet we live on and the end of the street is now a thousand miles or more away.
I hope we pass them again between here and Agadir, I would like to buy them a beer.
Love and Peace
Mermy and La Rose.
So we moved 200 kms down the coast and are now in Benicasim near Valencia. We found a nice site that is very cheap but the down side is that the staff are miserable. Probably from dealing with all the Brits and Dutch that make up 90% of the residents.
Rosie and I cycled down to the town today and walked round the market. It is a typical spanish market with loads of clothes, shoes and fruit & veg. We then rode along the sea front to a hotel that has free wi-fi. The coffee is yummy and we are sat looking over the Med and an empty soft sand beach.
As I type Rosie has just picked up a little bird that got inside the bar and flew into a window. She put it outside and it has been about 20 minutes but it seems to be coming round.
Oh well, back home to eat lunch and plan our day tomorrow.
Peace and love
Rosie and The Merman
Today Rosie and I had a fantastic day out in Barcelona on our bikes. We caught the train to Sants station and cycled down to the Fira and then up the hill to the Montjuic castle. En route we did a fantastic geocache multi and afterwards rode down the mountain at high speed to La Ramba for a late lunch. I took loads and loads of great pics including the olympic stadium and some video over the city. We eventually caught the train home to Sitges at 1815 and came home to play cards and drink wine and to eat catalan ham and fresh bread……Shame that I had my camera stolen by a toerag on La Rambla…. I never felt a thing. After all my years of travelling you might think I would be wiser!
Oh well, just lucky it was only my pocket cheapy and not my good one, but the pics were the sad loss.
Love and peace
Mermy
I like Sitges very much.
It has a lovely ambience about it and there is no sense of menace. I guess it is because Sitges is the Brighton of Spain. There are gays everywhere you look and a quick google tells you the full picture with over 26 gay bars in the tiny centre. Rosie bless her does not possess a gaydar and was unaware of the fact till I brought it to her attention. That in itself though is a good indicator of how chilled out the town is.
Today we cycled every inch of the town, exploring allyways and beaches and finding cool surprises around every corner. The whole population of the town was out walking, rollerblading, cycling or rollerskating. How cool is it to see old fashioned rollerskates instead of blades!
On Tuesday we are heading down the coast to Valencia where we will be visiting a friend.
Love and Peace
Rosie and The Merman
Posted under Uncategorized
Rosie and I went by bus yesterday into Barcelona. We alighted at the Plaza Catalunya in 3º of coldness and immediately went into Bracafe a really old and lovely coffee house for a coffee, cake and a warm. We then did a circle of El Corte Ingles the massive department store and were finally warm enough to promenade down Las Ramblas.
We were taken by how clean everything is and how many recycling bins were scattered around the city. We even saw a council recycling van that was parked up taking everything from waste oil to old fridges.
We simply spent the day rooting down little alleyways and staring up at the great buildings. Talking of great buildings, the market hall in the Ramblas was superb. Not just a great space but the stalls were a work of art and you get the impression that the staff spend hours dressing the stall for business. In the trade we call it ‘Flashing’ and they do it so very well.
Another thing we loved in Barca was the drop and take bike system they have for the locals. You pay a subscription and you can take a bike for ten minutes from a stand and use it to get to a different part of the town centre. Exceeding ten minutes incurs a fee and the max is two hours, but the people take one leave it and then take another. As long as there is 10 minutes between dropping off and taking another, then there is no extra charge. A great and green way of moving around the town.
We shall be returning to Barcelona tomorrow but will be going by train this time and taking our bikes so that we can explore more easily. (Taking bikes on Spanish trains is free and very easy, they have special areas on the train and can accomodate 5 bikes in each carriage)
Till then folks pics can be seen at http://flickr.com/photos/17314462@N00/sets/72157610348169886/
Love and peace
Rosie and The Merman
Posted under Uncategorized
Hola from Espana.
We spent last night at Le Boulou a few miles from the border and this morning at the crack of 10 we set off to drive the 200km to Sitges where we planned to stay for a while. I will gloss over the details of how we got lost but suffice it to say that it cost us €18 in tolls to go twice through a tunnel that we had previously avoided by driving over the top of a mountain.
Anyhoo, we are now safely ensconced in a lovely campsite near the sea and 35km from Barcelona. There is a bus right outside the gate that goes to the centre of Barca and take an hour. Rosie and I plan to spend two days sightseeing and a couple more exploring locally on our bikes. We will be cursed for the next few days with daytime temps of around 20º so we might just get a bit of colour in our cheeks. (Mind you it is only 4º at night)
We are here for a week and then will be heading down to Finestrat where a friend of my son lives. The address is the house with the outside kitchen between the mayor and the Belgium rockstar, so given the fact that we got lost on a main road with a modern satnav, I hold little hope of finding Dominic’s house.
Love and Peace
Rosie and the Merman
Posted under Uncategorized
Having written a couple of innocuous blog entries moaning about the weather etc, I thought it about time I told you some of the joys of our trip so far.
Rosie has spent little time in France and so we planned the journey south to take in places that I know and love and places that I would have liked to see if I was not thundering past in a 38 tonne truck.
We spent some time in the Charante because I worked there 20 plus years ago. We stayed in Cognac for a couple of days and spent time ferreting around the old town. The electric bikes we bought are a godsend and make it easy to go off and explore. As I said in a previous post, the tourist side of Cognac is closed for the winter and so we decided to move along. To this end we went to St Fort which was a nice place to stop and spend a little time riding our bikes through the vinyards and stopping off a St Palais du Nė to show Rosie where I used to work.
I said in my last post that we went to Bordeaux, but we did not stop. The plan was to find somewhere close to the city to park and then explore the town on bikes, but unfortunately we could not get close due again to all the camping places being closed and so we went to the coast near Arcachon and watched the sun set over the bay.
The next day we headed off in a south east direction towards Carcasson. The reason we are going that way instead of straight down towards Bayonne, is to avoid big mountains in our quest to spend a few days in Barcelona. The drive took us through the wonderful forests of Gascogne and across into the Cathare region to our stopping point alongside the Canal Du Midi in a town called Trebes, which is just a few kilometers from the beautiful city of Carcasson. The most amazing Medieval walled city I think I have seen.
As we have trundled south, we have been struck by the regional variations. In the UK, go three or four hundred miles and the houses are the same and the people look the same etc. In France just 50 miles can totally change the landscape, house style and the people. Previously I have been dashing through the countryside at 50mph for 10 hours a day and France has gone in a day and a half and all I have interacted with are the staff at a truckstop. It is nice to drift through the land and to cover as much or as little distance as you wish.
As a grand PS, we went for a walk along the canal du midi yesterday and spent 20 minutes watching two otters playing in front of us. Totally unafraid they swam within two feet of me as I grabbed my camera. I will have to try to post some pics on Flickr but my battery is just about to die.
Love and Peace
Rosie and the Merman
So we went from Cognac down to St Fort Sur Né where we stayed for free at a vinyard. The free stay cost us almost €40 after we were professionally mugged by the owners who persuaded us to by booze that we are pretty sure we didn’t need or particularly want. We do however now possess a fine bottle of Grande Champagne Cognac that is 25 years old and begging to be sipped. On the subject of booze, we have found that Saint Lidl of paupers are now all over France and sell a very nice 8% strong ale for only €0.47 which means we can get sozzed for a couple of squid.
We went from St Fort to Bordeaux but the weather was crappy and so we headed south in the direction of Toulouse and are currently stealing wifi from the golden arches in Castelsarrasin before heading to Carcasson for a couple of days.
Peace and love
Mermy and la Rosie.