Days out and about

After returning from skiing we had the car for a few more days, so after a day of rest and having the luxury of a car to do the weekly shop we spent a couple of days out and about.

On the Saturday we headed back to Tarifa, we can’t resist a walk along the beach on a sunny day.  It was still a little chilly, but at the time there was snow in the UK so we weren’t complaining.

During a walk around the old town we went into the market and came across the artwork we had seen in the grounds of the art college in Cadiz in July!  You might recognise the ladies below although there were 5 in Cadiz, the pregnant lady we had not seen, but she was huge! And then the “head” which had also been in Cadiz all impressive pieces of artwork and so odd to see them again in Tarifa especially in the market which is tiny and we would not normally even take a look in – what a nice surprise.

Look how tiny the chair look behind her!

Love these strange woman, want one in my house!

We then headed off down the beach with our picnic to make the most of the sunshine.

Tarifa island with lighthouse over looking Morocco in distance

Lovely long sandy Tarifa beach

Thee next day we headed up into the hills behind Algeciras Bay into the Alcornocales Natural Park which is part of the GR7 (Gran Recorrido/Long journey) footpath which is 1250kn through Andalucía and is part of the bigger European route 4 which is over 10,000km and runs through Spain, the French Pyrenees, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Greece – not that we were attempting to go further than a couple of miles! 

The views were stunning back to Gib and over to Morocco, we were lucky the sun was shinning, but it was again a chilly day.

Gibraltar in the distance

The park is full of cork oak trees most of which have been harvested for the cork, the pictures below show one of the larger trees and how it has been stripped of the cork.

Cork Tree

Close up of the stripped cork

The walk was slightly strange as you are very much stuck to one path as not able to deviate due to the fenced off cork trees and also due to hunting ground. The paths are reasonable well sign posted which would be good if you want to properly walk the GR7 route.  We were lucky to see lots of wildlife, there are a large number of scary looking cows/bulls roaming around they are big with large horns but you would have though they were man eaters the way we were avoiding them! They were accompanied by Egrets and lots of them.  There were also a large number of birds of prey mainly what we believe is the Golden Eagle which are lifted by the thermals over the hills in groups of 10+, they look really impressive with their huge wingspan and we saw what we think was a Red Kite which was hunting.