In between a Christmas stint in Wales and a New Year’s Eve party in London, my sister, Sarah, found the will and the way to Spain to spend a couple of days with us. We didn’t do all that much really, just read newspapers, ate out a lot, walked and talked. Nice to have you […]

Happy New Year to you; hope you had a good one. A quiet New Year’s Eve celebration for us this time: we sat on the beach and watched the various fireworks displays going off around the Mar Menor lagoon. In Spain, it’s customary to eat twelve grapes in quick succession in the last few moments […]

After a Christmas breakfast of scrambled eggs (Dave’s favourite), we exchanged presents. I was happy to find lots of Cadbury’s and Thornton’s in my stocking – my family know me well. Dave and I had lots of well chosen travel gifts, including a device which relieves the pain of bites and stings by delivering a […]

I’d been looking forward to Dec 21st for a long time – it was the day my family arrived in Spain for Christmas and I was so excited. I did a big food shop in the morning, a total of 4 hours in 4 supermarkets (I’ve never hosted Xmas before and had the added handicap […]

Never one to turn down an offer to go on holiday, my good friend Liz responded to my please-come-and-visit-us e-mail with the words ‘you don’t need to ask twice’ and promptly booked herself and boyfriend Mark onto flights to visit us in December. Their holiday wish list included eating tapas and seafood, so we whisked […]

At the Sailing Association of Mar Menor meeting we met Rob, an English guy who sold up everything in the UK, bought a yacht named ‘Paprika’ and sailed her down to Spain. Paprika is now based in Cartagena, the closest city to Los Alcazares, and Rob kindly offered to take us out sailing for the […]

Following our little tour around the lakes, it was time to drive the 400km back to our flat. With no time to plan or research this trip, we had no idea what sights or experiences we’d encounter on the long journey home. So we were pleasantly surprised when our route took us past the Sierra […]

You might recall that Squiffy & I started off our travels in the UK. The [British] Lake District was somewhere that I was (still am) looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately at the time the rain stopped play and we headed south to find some sun. So when I opened our Back Roads of Southern Spain […]

Following the Irish wedding in Cork, we couldn’t get a direct flight back to the Spanish airport nearest to our apartment in Los Alcazares, Mar Menor. Instead we had to fly to Malaga, which is on the south coast of Spain and about a five hour drive from our ‘home’. Rather than attempt to mad-dash […]

Squiffy is already a fully-qualified, super-shiny day-skipper; allowing her to sail pretty-much anything, including big yachts. I, on the other hand, am nothing more than Incompetent Crew. To level the playing-field, I thought that it would be a good idea for me to learn the basics of sailing as our round-the-world transit will undoubtedly involve […]