Rocktober looms, so…..

Tomorrow night I fly to Gatwick on the first leg of my journey to join the Witch Cross lads for our Rocktober tour. So today, it was great to get out on the bikes with Miki and do a 25 km circuit taking in the local playa…it all helps to keep the fitness levels up for what is set to be a busy week!We set off from our home in Turre and went via the nearby fishing village of Garrucha, and then along the Playa to our favourite cafe, Masko, where we then headed uphill towards Mojacar village, before turning right onto the bypass which eventually took us back down to rejoin our original route.

We’re so lucky with the weather here, and it was perfect cycling weather, a cool breeze, sunny, not too warm. Miki particularly enjoyed giving her new bike a run, having just bought it on our last trip up to France! It was amazing to see the river, usually dry, still full of water after the recent disastrous floods.

Having the bikes stops us getting complacent. Even living in such a great place, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where you rarely get out and enjoy what’s on your own doorstep, so I love that aspect of it. And yeah, we weren’t the only ones with the same idea!

Kev Moore

Off topic: Rain stops play

Sunday, a sunny but temperate day, and we thought we’d head out to the local tennis courts on the bikes for an hour or two knocking a ball about. We’ve been threatening to do this for a while, but the summer was just TOO hot, and what with one thing and another, we’d never got around to it. Which is a shame, because I don’t think we’ll be getting around to it anytime soon.

The courts have been totally trashed by the recent apocalyptic floods that battered our area a couple of weeks back. I hadn’t even realized that the large river channel some minutes away from us had burst its banks. (We arrived home from the North the morning after the floods) -and the river channel that passes our house hadn’t been breached. But on arrival at the tennis park, we dismounted and stood, dumbfounded at the devastation. Every lamp-post , fence, or child’s play apparatus was swathed in bracken, detritus and debris, given up by the river on its relentless march to the sea.  The whole of the ground had been layered in mud, up to 6 inches thick in places, which had now eerily dried and cracked into some kind of devil’s jigsaw. It looked like a tennis centre from Mars. The force of the water had ripped metal stantions and fences asunder, and left weeds and driftwood occupying the bleachers where spectators might normally be expected to sit. It was a sad and depressing sight, especially, in the light of the current economic climate, we can’t possibly know when it might be cleared and repaired.

The day was salvaged by turning it into a full fledged bike ride out to Los Gallardos and back to Turre, exploring the route of the (eventual) new railway and a new urbanization that I didn’t even know existed! (I need to get out more!)

But I couldn’t help thinking, as I cycled along, knowing how saddened I was to see the state of the courts and the despair of ever seeing them restored to their former glory, just how much worse it was for those who’d returned to find their homes like this, or, tragically, those who never returned at all.

Kev Moore