From the Sierra Nevada to Gibraltar (290km)

Today we were heading out on our longest daily journey yet (290km). We have decided to take a detour from the intended route of Cordoba then Seville (for the originally planned sky diving trip which we have decided to save for another time) and instead head down the dreaded Costa del Sol with the plan of visiting Gibraltar. Just because we can 😂

We set off after a breakfast of more of the delicious croissant with our coffee, and followed the sat nav down the opposite way to which we had come. We headed down through the mountain roads into a very pretty village/town with a water wheel and coloured bunting zig-zagging above us. As we headed on through the streets they started to become concerningly narrow and we found ourselves heading up a one-way street to the centre. As we neared the top we noticed lots of villagers just standing and staring, so I jumped out to ask for help and was told the only routes out were not passable by such a big vehicle and the only way out was back down the one-way street we had just come up😱

After helping Chris try and reverse in an incredibly tight space to turn around, I ran down the one-way street to the bottom in the hope of stopping the on-coming traffic so Chris could make his decent down the narrow single file lane. To my horror, half way down with no way of stopping it was a bus bigger than our motorhome making its way up towards Chris 😱😂

Feeling slightly hopeless and with Chris being completely out of sight I just had to let things play out, but tried then to stop the cars coming up behind the bus to try and prevent complete and utter chaos up there. As I was doing this I noticed another road feeding into this one-way system above where I was stopping the traffic, at which point I just shrugged and let them all carry on😆 and walked up the road behind them relieved to see Chris in the distance making his way down having navigated a way for the bus to get through, and the lovely man I had initially had a hand gestured English to Spanish conversation with, was walking down in front of Chris asking all the cars to reverse back down and let him pass😲 - the kindness of strangers. At the bottom, with much 'muchas gracias' and more hand gestures I jumped back in the cab and we headed back in the direction of the campsite and returned the way we came.

After heading round Granada we headed down to the coast and hit the coast road for the first time since Donastia San Sebastian. We drove through tunnel after tunnel cutting through the mountainous coast line winding along to Malaga. Where the original houses remained, they were pretty and simple, painted all in white and adorned with terracotta tiled rooves matching the colour of the burnt scrubland filling the space between the building and farmland. The farmland seeming to be mainly olives groves, acre upon acre of them with their shimmering silver leaves.

the prettier villages before it got ugly.

As we drove on past Malaga and onto Marbella, prime real estate cluttered the coastline vying for the best sea view, and where they could no longer achieve this at ground level they had built upwards in the larger towns completely ruining the appeal of the coastline. Giant billboards lined the road side shouting for attention and promoting shopping malls, apartments for sale, hotels, hair implants.....

Below and in between the billboards, roadside restaurants lined the way, treating their customers to curry, tapas, burgers, again the list goes on....

All in all it was busy and ugly and for a while we were regretting the Gibraltar decision.

busy roads 😫

Fortunately though the coastal chaos eased as we headed further south and we eventually arrived at our Aire for the night at the local marina 10 minutes walk from the border crossing into Gibraltar. This was a great spot for the night with the typical marina sounds setting the scene- ropes clanking on masts and water lapping gently against the jetties. A quiet business as people came and went or were doing maintenance jobs on board.

our first sighting of Gibraltar on the now quieter roads.

Once we had settled in and Chris had had a lie down after the stress of the costa del sol, we decided to walk over to Gibraltar for a look around so we could make a plan for tomorrow. The walk over was simple. We had our passports stamped leaving Spain and then had to wait for an easyjet flight to take off in front of us before we could walk across the runway and along Winston Churchill Avenue into town. The experience of arriving in Gibraltar was discombobulating 😂. We felt like we were still in Spain, but suddenly everyone around us was speaking English and all the signs were back in English (having neither heard or seen it for 2 weeks). We wandered into ocean village which was reminiscent of Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth with its Wagamama's and Pizza express and views over the harbour, so we headed on into the old town passing through some of the original stone walls and found ourselves a shaded spot to sit and have a drink. I am then ashamed to admit we did go back to Pizza Express for supper and sat looking out over the water enjoying the familiarity.