Day 2 Algeciras to Tarifa

Firstly we would like to start with an apology.  We got so carried away by the donation of £1000 that we received from an anonymous donor that we forgot to mention an equally important donation of £2 from little Beth.  She brought her pocket money inside a little tin.  If Beth's mummy, Claire, is reading this blog perhaps she can explain to Beth that her donation may one day help to save the life of a child suffering from cancer.  Thank you so much Beth!

We had to delay the start of our walk on Sunday due to very heavy rain.  Eventually we set off at 9.45a.m.and reached Tarifa city center at 9.00p.m.!  It was without doubt the most gruelling walk that Ana Maria and I have ever done.  We encountered torrential downpours along the way, together with brief bouts of sunshine which had our ponchos coming on and off almost continuously!.. In the end we decided we might as well get wet and stored the ponchos.  The first stage of our walk from Algeciras took us 5 km to a former military road which climbed all the way for nearly 7kms.  Part opf the road had been washed away and we were lucky to be able to get through.  We then connected to 4 more paths which unfortunately zig zagged along the coast.  This together with extremely muddy paths made progress difficult and slow, making the journey a lot longer than we had anticipated (32 kms), some 11 hours all told!  We arrived completely exhausted and decide this morning to take a rest day today.  Tomorrow we will be settiung off early towards Bolonia on our way to Cadiz.

Incredibly,  along one of the very muddy paths we took in the pouring rain we stopped at a little cottage to ask for some water when to our complete amazement we cam across a few friends from Gibraltar, including Leslie and Pussy Whitwell who were celebrating a family member's birthday.  We are still kicking ourselves for not accepting their hospitality to stay the night.  We could have saved ourselves a few drenchings!

A few hours later we came across Aurelio and Mercedes, an elderly Spanish couple who were managing a small farm who, on hearing we were doing the camino offered us Beer, tea, water and a place to sleep!  Stupidly once again we turned down a fantastic offer  and decided to carry on.  Aurelio warned us that a small bridge had collapsed further down the road, very close to the beach.  In addition the tide was coming in and we might have difficulty getting through.  In the end we had to climb over a series of small rocks and boulders with the incoming waves drenching us from the left as we (successfully) attempted to cross over to the other side.  This proved so exhausting that we had to stop fior a while to get our breath back!

On our final approach to Tarifa we inadvertently trespassed on land belonging to a German couple.  They were very kind and allowed us to go through their property, otheriwse we would have been forced to walk almost another hour to our destination, something which I don't think we would have managed.  Klaus, if you read this blog please accept our apologies for the trespass and our thanks for your help.


Buen Camino!