Today is February 14th, St Valentines day. Fortunately for Joe, Amazon next-day delivered the card for Moe.

Moe wasn’t quite so lucky, apparently having to spend many a morning lovingly, hand crafting a symbol of affection, whilst I was busy at Spanish lessons. To be honest, it looks great and so much thought…

Today the walking group had two new additions in Paul and Andrea, and one no-show, with Lorna confined to bed with a cough / cold / Covid – I guess we will soon find out which!

We drove to Playa de Camposoto and parked at the end of the boardwalk.

The weather was fine, not too cold, but still a wicked Easterly wind drove sand across the dunes and over the beach. We ate a picnic lunch at Bateria de San Genis and found shelter from the strong wind around the former battlements.

Batería de San Genís is part of the whole defensive system of bastions and batteries that protected the southern entrance of Islote de Sancti Petri in the early nineteenth century along with the Castillo de Sancti Petri and two other batteries, Batería de Aspiroz and Batería de Urrutia. It was named after Sangenís Antonio Torre, and was capable of holding 35 pieces of artillery.

We walked around the headland and followed the coastline back to the car. About 5 miles in total but we feel pretty beaten up by the wind and sand.

There are no cafes open on the beach during the winter months but Joe’s cunning plan lead us to the La Cremita Cafe in downtown San Fernando. This is a coffee shop, cake and bread retail outlet which serves products baked at the award-winning “La Cremita” bakery – situated in an industrial unit on the western edge of Chiclana.

We enjoyed a coffee and then proceeded to purchase all the cakes and bread we needed. Plus lots we didn’t need! They did have some delicious-looking Valentines cakes but we managed to control our temptation.

Monday and we cycled to El Nautico with Richard and Jennifer. This was our second visit there in just over a week and the food, location and ambience is a good as ever. We headed over the cliffs on another blustery day. The only mishap being Moe fell into a gorse bush and is suffering from a wound to her pride.

Sunday we packed a picnic and set off for Trafalgar. The ride was again plagued by very strong winds and by the time we had reached El Palmar we decided to abort the trip and rode into El Palmar for our packed lunch. On the route back we cycled past the medieval tower along the dirt track which runs parallel to the beach. It’s not an easy route but it’s a lot prettier than the cycle track alongside the main road. We got back in time to watch the England v Italy rugby international, which England won by 34-14.

Saturday and we are still under orange wind warnings so a walk into town was as much as we wanted to do. The awning is still just about in one piece after a second very wild night.

Friday and the campsite maintenance crews are busy collecting the overnight twigs and branches which have parted their way from the abundance of trees at Camping La Rosaleda. Nick has had a large branch land on his motorhome but can’t see any damage. Joe was woken up at 3:00am by the storm and given our pitch is overlooked by numerous trees, was expecting disaster at any moment. Nothing happened.

Throughout Friday, the storm continued un-abated and despite the orange weather warnings for wind, two intrepid cyclists set off on a near death mission on their bikes. Moe remined me later that there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity…

The prize nonetheless, a bag of Chicharrones and a wheel barrow wheel. In fact, a wheel each! As if cycling without the encumbrance of a wheel wasn’t challenging enough! Meanwhile, the wheel is making a very good weight to hold down the awning sides…

The “wheel-barrow-wheel shop” was interesting. A co-operative which stocked everything from farming tools to wheel-barrow-wheels to kitchen appliances to local sherry. A bottle of the finest local sherry from Chiclana just happened to fall into the shopping cart.

The Chicharrones were very tasty though and almost worth the effort! You may ask what these are. Well they aren’t entirely dissimilar to pork scratchings but a) they are not tooth extraction devices and b) there is more meat to them. They are cooked in this particular shop every Friday.

Thursday was another Spanish lesson followed by multiple trips to Conil Bike – to buy a new saddle for Joe’s bike and replacement brake blocks for both of our bikes.

Wednesday was our first visit to El Nautico of 2023.

Finally, Wednesday evening was Quiz night and a stunning performance, particularly from Jennifer and Richard! Third prize and to be honest, we made quite a few errors – on another occasion we could have easily claimed top spot and the massive 28 Euros in prize money