My 40th Birthday – home and away!

Gotta thank my sis for this one....

As I said, I’m not the easiest person to force to enjoy a Birthday, especially a landmark one.  But my 40th Birthday on 27^th September was a lovely day. 

After the obligatory card and present opening session I decided that it was such a lovely sunny day I would like to take Ralph for a bike ride (That’s me on the bike and Ralph running along beside, to clarify!).  This fitted in nicely with our plans to have a pub lunch with Simon’s parents next to Hockley Woods.  Ralph and I set off and met up with the three Newmans in the beer garden before heading home again the long way to burn off the lunch I’d just eaten.

I walked into the kitchen to find that Ann had been extremely busy over the weekend whilst I’d been in Birmingham, making this fine creation:  

What an incredible cake!  A detailed replica of Harvey the RV, complete with bicycles, picnic table laden with snacks and playing cards and a barbecue alongside.  Simon gets credit for recreating Stephen Sea Eagle the kayak completely out of icing! I’m so grateful for the time and effort it must have taken to make this.  It would almost be a shame to eat it.  I said almost…..

Simon had arranged a ‘surprise’ dinner out in Leigh-on-Sea with friends.  He’d gone to loads more effort to get ten of us together on a school night to celebrate the demise of my thirties and they had all made a huge effort to glam up and decorate the table with balloons and confetti for maximum embarrassment! And yes, the majority of the amazing cake got eaten that night!  What a busy day. And all in the knowledge that we were off to Spain the next day to continue the celebrations.

Simon had, again, been busy organising the rental of my sister-in-law’s family’s (I think that’s right?) villa near Gibraltar.  There were four of us going but Simon and I were heading there on the Thursday afternoon, with Tim and Libby joining us for the rest of the weekend on the Friday.  Easy flights from Southend to Malaga with Easyjet (right) followed by picking up our hire car to drive the hour and a half south to the villa still got us there in daylight, even after a mammoth supermarket shop!  Having met the keyholder and been given a quick tour, we took some suitably gorgeous photos to send to Tim and Libby to get them extra excited about the weekend ahead. Simon and I then relaxed with our balcony view for the evening.  It had been a long day.

View down to the sea across the golf course

It's going to be good relaxing by that pool tomorrow......

Tim and Libby weren’t due to arrive until Friday afternoon but sadly this got even later thanks to a couple of hours delay on their flight.  But this gave Simon and I extra pool time in the morning before we drove back to the airport to pick up our housemates for the weekend.
Back at the villa we gave the others the tour, grabbed some snacks and went off to walk across the golf course to the beach.  The beach had dark black ash-like sand near the villa and….. were those people NAKED?!  Yes, that’s right, we discovered that the nearest stretch of sand to us was of the nudist disposition!  Luckily, the sun was beginning to dip, so clothes were being put back on for welfare reasons!  We headed away from the bathers towards Playa de la Alcaidesa where we had been tipped off to head to Blanco’s beach bar.  The sand here was suddenly much more golden and, despite having snacked back at the villa, we ordered wine and tapas to keep us going whilst we got stuck into a new card game introduced by Libby.  In the pitch black and after a couple of bottles of wine, we opted to walk home via the streets which was only about 20 minutes, but mostly uphill!  The gaming and drinking continued back on the balcony.

Saturday was a planned lazy pool day as the weather was predicted to be the sunniest of the weekend.  As we are effectively here in the low season, despite it being in the high twenties celcius there is hardly anyone else here in the complex and so the four of us had the pool to ourselves for the majority of the day.  Bliss!  For Saturday evening we decided to take a drive to San Roque nearby, a beautiful quaint little Spanish town.  We got into the Spanish spirit by finding a small bar to partake in yet more wine, tapas and card playing for the rest of the evening!

A fountain in the centre of San Roque

Sunday was set aside for another road trip, this time to the southernmost point of Spain, Tarifa, also known as a mecca for kite and windsurfers.  Having visited we could completely understand why – it must be one of the windiest places on earth!

The view from the cocktail bar.... and the cocktails!

We escaped the gales by enjoying a cocktail and lunch in a beach café before walking to the very tip of Europe, as handily depicted in this photo (right), where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Having been sandblasted, we headed back to the villa for showers and a change of clothes before walking back down to Blanco’s on the beach whilst the sun set for our last night’s entertainment.  There was a live band playing a mixture of popular covers and Spanish music, supplying the soundtrack to yet more drinking, eating and cards. 

Sunset over the rock as we walked into the town

Before we knew it, the weekend was over and Monday arrived.  Time to head back to Malaga airport, this time all four of us getting the same flight back to Southend.  Massive thanks to Tim and Libby for their effortless company over the weekend and of course, even more thanks to the Lindholt clan for letting us borrow the villa.  Hopefully we left it in prime condition, so another visit won’t be out of the question?!