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| 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.
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| View down to the sea across the golf course |
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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?!
