The Scenic Route to Istanbul: The Heat is On!

The road from where we are into Alicante was a tad dodgy so it was best all round that Rachel didn’t brave the tricky cycling conditions. I navigated my way around the city with ye olde fashioned methode of ‘line of sight’, and felt I got a flavour of the place, albeit a little brief.

At the marina I was surprised to come across an old galleon by the name of Santisima Trinidad as I’m sure you’ll all know is a 140 gun first rate ship, being the heaviest armed ship in the World at the time of refit in 1802. Of course it didn’t stop her being wrecked by the mighty British Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, don’t mention the war.

Onwards and upwards to the Castillo de Santa Bárbara, I was in full flow on turbo as I entered the castle gates, but what was that whistling I kept hearing? As I looked around there’s a cop in full stride chasing me. Ooops, another brush with the law beckons. Being the fairly law-abiding guy I am, I immediately stopped (as I should have done at the stop line/gate house), and had a friendly conversation with a rather puffed Officer Dibble, or Spanish equivelant. He politely showed me where to put my bike, after which I had a look around the amazing castle. If ever you get the chance then it is well worth the climb, unbelievably it’s free and the views alone are worth the effort, but the castle is actually immaculate.

Having done a Whatsapp video call (from the highest point) back to Rachel, who was just in view on the beach 5 miles away, I returned through the valley of death where the roadworks on the dual carriageway made the one lane a tad entertaining. Not wishing to hold the traffic up, even though I was hitting a constant 16mph, I kept diving into the roadworks section, just like old times on the police bike! Anyway, on about my 3^rd deviation back out into the traffic, with the appropriate arm signal of course, there was a guy on a moped who waved me out. ‘Excellent work Diego’, he overtook me (just) and I acknowledged him. The traffic lights ahead changed to red and Diego had to stop, ooh this will be fun when the lights change to green methinks. As I roll up alongside him he breaks into Spanish, to which I reply “Lo siento, no hablo Espanyol”, so we had a short conversation in English,as is usually the case, before the drag start on the green light, he left me in his dust.

Getting back to the van in one piece, we were both hoping for a relaxing afternoon sunbathing, unfortunately we got sand blasted off the beach. So we made the 17 mile return trip south to where we were yesterday and got some shelter from the wind. En route we stopped off at Lidl to re-stock with a little alcohol, well it is chilli tonight, but definitely not chilly as it’s 25c as I type this!