Santander

Third port of the trip - Santander, home of the famous bank.

We docked at the port and caught a shuttle bus to the port gates and town centre.

The town has some interesting new modern buildings and some fantastic belle epoque houses that look like fairy tale palaces, but unforgiveably I haven't taken any photos of them!

We walked along the Promenade past a sculpture of the boys who used to dive for pennies that were thrown by rather cruel sounding tourists, although perhaps it was all good fun. 

We walked around to the beautiful El Sardinero District and I enjoyed my third paddle of the holiday, but the water is definitely not getting any warmer.

Finally we walked back through the town and stopped to look in an estate agents window, just to be nosy. 

A Coruna

Fantastic day out in A Coruna with Tina and Matt. We took a long walk on a Promenade, all the way from the port where we docked, past a marina, ancient stones that were actually fakes, the Hercules Lighthouse, beautiful scenery and round to a huge beach.

Once there we had our second paddle of the holiday and Matt and Darren got soaked by a big wave. 

Cycling around Guernsey

The sea is completely calm and at the moment you wouldn't even know that we have sailed anywhere, and hopefully it will continue for the next few days.

This morning we arrived off the coast of Guernsey and went ashore by tender. 

We had our Bromptons and Matt had hired a standard bike for himself and an electric one for Tina. However, after seeing how great Tina's bike looked he immediately upgraded his own to electric too. 

This left us in the unlikely position of not being able to keep up with them. Every now and then I heard a quiet whooshing sound as one or the other of them shot past and disappeared into the distance!

It was a beautiful day though as the weather was amazing, the scenery beautiful and the roads were very quiet - just the occasional polite motorist who waited ages before almost apologetically overtaking.

Matt and I found a nice beach for a paddle and Tina and Darren found a lovely mini beach hut at the coffee stop. 

Riding to our cruise

We caught a train down to Gatwick on Saturday, had a lovely few hours with M and D and then on Sunday morning we set off on our bikes towards Southampton.

We only actually cycled as far as Gatwick Station and then caught another train to speed us on our way.

Once there we loaded up our packs, and cycled about two miles in glorious sunshine to the docks. 

It is a huge ship and our indoor cabin is very nice. After settling in we set off to find Tina and Matt who were already on board. 

It took us a couple of hours to track them down, and then explore the ship, but we have found a great vantage point right at the front of the ship. Great views of the sail away and a quick drink to celebrate. 

Big Track Cycle

Today is the last day of the heatwave so we set off this morning to cycle around the Big Track to make the most of it.

The Big Track is a 10 mile long cycle ride along the Beeston canal and river Trent, and it is all traffic free. 

We cycled down to the station and started our loop from there. 

I am supposed to be in training for an event at the end of July and this is our first time on the Bromptons this year. I had forgotten how much fun they were. 

First stop was the café at the junction of the river and canal 

where we had a good chocolate brownie and coffee, before cycling along the canal and back home. 

Lovely bank holiday weekend

Margs and Dave came up for the weekend and the weather was spectacular.

Saturday afternoon we went to Newstead Abbey and tested Darren's new drone, then Sunday afternoon we went down to Highfields Boating Lake. 

Final photo is of the team listening to the Championship football league scores, fingers crossed for Burton Albion. 

Table Mountain

I am a couple of days late with this blog as we are now in England, sitting on a train and heading home.

However, I can't miss blogging about our outing to Table Mountain on Monday. It was a beautiful day and there was a huge queue to get on to the cable car, but eventually we got our turn. 

There was an excellent path on the flat top of the Table and the views were incredible. The island on the photo below is Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. 

We also saw some dassie, which is a cute little animal that is about 25 centimetres long and is apparently related to elephants! 

We didn't stay too long as we were worried about the wait to get back down from the mountain, but strangely there was no queue at all and we were down and on our bus within 15 minutes. This was fortunate as we had a plane to catch later in the day. 

While I remember, we also went on a bike tour this morning with a lovely guide called Innocent. He took us all around the centre of Cape Town and we finished at brightly coloured Bo Kaap District.