Pictures and a few extra comments. On loading the bikes at the riding place, my back carrier snapped. Fortunately George's scouting skills came into play and he did a superb knotting/lashing job which was still holding fine several days later when we got to a bike shop to replace it. The photo of the actual knot is on the iPad but not on the selection the blogger has offered me. Where has it gone? These things remain mysteries.
Tom's account of the accommodation that night was a little watered down. We had cycled quite far and one is never certain of actually finding the places marked on the map. The path to where the campsite was marked was guarded by a sign of beware the fierce dog. We took the point and when on down the hill to where the cabins were marked, 2.5kms down a fairly rough dirt road and passed some wild boar. The place we found had no sign of anyone, the house was lived in but looking through the window seemed rather chaotic and there was no phone number or welcome sign or anything. On the side of the house facing he sea, was a glass conservatory area that must have once been a dining area and outside a big wooden terrace now rotting. Inside were lots of potted plants, an array of furniture and a very beautiful cat. In front of the terrace was mown grass and beyond that facing the sea were the huts. A row of clean huts with beds, a rotting wooden pathway and at the end a very expensive looking brand new shower, with a visa/master card sign on the door. The huts had windows facing the house with blinds, but glass doors with no blinds facing the path and the sea. The only protection inside was a flower painted onto the glass. Besides ordinary flowers like tulip, there was cannabis and the huts were painted in rather psychodelic colours. Just what sort of place was this?
No one was prepared to cycle the 2.5kms up the path and past the boars to see if the notice at the top had a phone number, so we just settled in and hoped we could sort it out in the morning. I must say I was a little uneasy, particularly as the doors had no keys in the locks.
At about 1.30, I was awoken to hear Tom talking with a man who had come in. The conversation seemed to be going something like Tom giving the explanation that we had found no one around and were going to come up to the house in the morning to pay, and he hoped that was alright. There was a moments silence and then a long drawn out "No" from the man. There then followed a conversation about when Tom should come up to the house and persuaded him that the morning would be alright. The man left having turned the outside lights on. I left it a respectable time before admitting I was awake and a little longer before visiting the toilets. There was now a light on outside each cabin. Some were red and some were white. I hoped this had no significance. My sleep after that was interrupted by dreams of whole families arriving to stay in the hut we were in. In the morning we decided to leave quickly and have breakfast along the way. At the house a man came to greet and and beckoned us in. He seemed to have only one word of English, "coffee". And there it was a table laid for three breakfasts and coffee. Communication was through Google translate. He was very pleasant and it seemed a perfectly respectable place, if a little casual in its upkeep. There was a fairly large birdcage at one end of the main room with various parakeets and other birds; and there was the very friendly cat. Was he the same man who had come the night before? None of us knew.
It was a wild lonely place and rather beautiful, apart from rotting verandas.
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