PORTUGAL
SPAIN
Rio Guadiana
Ayamonte
Seville
Portimão
Mazagon
Gibraltar
Rota
Strait of Gibraltar
Ceuta
MOROCCO
BLUEWATERCRUISING 09
NEXT MONTH
Biscay EUROPE
With so much great sailing
machine was cheap. (As you can see, I
possible in the area, the series
really am quite easy to please).
will extend for one more month,
Gibraltar
When the weather deteriorated (so
with the fi nal installment reporting
much so that quite a few of the ports in
on Morocco, North Africa.
AFRICA
the area were closed to shipping), we
PORTUGALPORTUGAL
battened down the hatches and read,
SPAIN
sewed, cooked, watched DVDs and did It is certainly the place to go for your
Rio Guadiana
research for our volcano project. Every cowboy hat, chaps and all things horsey.
Ayamonte
Seville
now and then we donned full wet weather
Portimão
Mazagon gear to escape to the bar for a chat. On the
DOÑANA NATIONAL PARK
cooking front, Bethany made chocolate This area of Andalucía contains the
Gibraltar
Rota
truffles and Bryn and David cooked Remy- Doñana National Park – Spain’s largest
the-rat-inspired ratatouille (you have to national park and a World Heritage Site.
see the movie). Once we had cooked, The park consists of more than 50,000
Strait of Gibraltar
sewed, watched and read ourselves silly, hectares of umbrella pines, natural
and it was still raining, we hired a car for waterways and marshland, bounded by
Ceuta
a few days and did a bit of exploring. 30m high sand dunes to seaward. We spent
an afternoon in the Marine Museum trying
THE GOOD, THE BAD
to translate the info from Spanish into
MOROCCO
AND THE UGLY
English to learn how the great dunes were
El Rocío is one of the places from where formed and what birds and nasty beasties
many Spanish pioneers left for America. lurked in and around them, including
They took with them the architecture scorpions, snakes and spiders. We didn’t
and dress style of the region – ‘cowboy’ know that scorpions were found in Spain
hats, western saddles, chaps, etc. Today and Portugal. The museum also had an
the streets are still just bare sand and all amazing display of life size models of
the houses, bars and restaurants have whales and dolphins, including complete
hitching posts outside to tie up your horse. skeletons of a killer whale, a 20m fin
The whole place is just like a Spaghetti whale and exhibits showing local fishing
Western film set – I almost expected to methods and boatbuilding techniques.
see tumbleweed rolling down the street to Later, the rain stopped long enough for
to.end t
h.alt
e.end M
e
d.end
the haunting theme tune from The Good, us to scale the dunes and walk along the
The Bad and The Ugly. Wandering around top for about a mile to take in the amazing
the deserted streets during siesta time (not views out to sea and inland over the vast
being back in the swing of Spanish time), pine forest and marshes.
we realized that Beth and Bryn’s education
Biscay EUROPE
was seriously lacking – they’d never seen
SEVILLE
a western. We added The Good, The Bad We ventured into Seville to experience
and The Ugly and The Magnificent Seven! the famous April Fiesta. The first time
over the winter and were delighted to find
Gibraltar
to our Amazon wish list. we went to see the women promenading
how much easier this made the job of
AFRICA
Today, El Rocío is the focus of one (through the mud) in their flamenco
picking out the buoyage and it was great of Spain’s biggest pilgrimages when the dresses, accompanied by horses and riders,
to have all the information we needed place is apparently overrun by thousands horse and mule carriages. The second time
without having to go below or use a head of visitors who descend on horseback and we went to get a flavour of the fairground.
torch to read the chart in the cockpit. We in horse drawn carriages for the annual On the way into Seville we did Ikea in
wove our way between navigational buoys Romería del Rocío, which centres on a Spanish on a hunt for under-bed-springy-
with nonchalant ease and tied up on the tiny wooden effigy of the Virgin Mary. thingies for improved comfort and >>
holding pontoon. Okay, so the chart plotter
said that the holding pontoon was in the
car park, but we forgave it this time.
Opposite page: The harbour at Mazagon. This page,
It was great to get our first night
top left: Bethany and Bryn sporting new sunglasses.
passage of the season over and done with
Bottom: Sand roads and hitching posts in El Rocio.
and to be in Spain again. To celebrate we
advanced the clocks an hour, did the usual
arrival paperwork, had a stiff drink and
went to bed.
Mazagon turned out to be an
undistinguished (out of season) Spanish
holiday resort with a long sandy beach,
a few restaurants and a couple of
supermarkets. The marina itself was fine
– the people were friendly and the two bars
good with free Wi-Fi. Also the washing
September 09 Sailing Today 91
ST149
FamilyRTG.indd 103 15/7/09 16:43:33
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