On the Rock with Persian inspired building
Packed up our tent at Tarifa and spread the damp washing over the gear in the van. The van has been leaking oil from the left hand front so it is a daily routine to check it in the morning. The owner at the car hire firm knows about it but the mechanic doesn't know from where it originates. If the oil pressure switch is over on that side, then I would hazard a guess it has something to do with it as it only leaks when the van has been travelling so it appears to happen under pressure! Maybe that is too simple and is why I am not a mechanic!
Plan is to visit Gibraltar for the morning and leave the car in Spain, walking across. Again, we get in the wrong lane and we are on our way via a queue we can't get out of.
A Barbary Marque, thought to have come over from North Africa once upon a time
There are many very, very narrow streets and many one way systems. Pay a visit to St Michaels's cavern - a huge limestone cavern which has had uses such as a safe place during the 1779-1783 seige and now a section of it has been carved out to house a theatre stage. Stallactites and mites and we meet up with Keith and Nicole who tell us they were four cars behind us in the queue and watched Andrew leap out every so often to rearrange the damp washing! The famous Barbary Marques are all over the road, the babies so cute. Finding a radio station in English we learn that tomorrow (29th April, Saturday) the local regiment are celebrating a huge anniversary of their inception and are taking part in a charity cannon pull and there is to be a ceremony where their traditional blue berets are to be exchanged for khaki ones. Here, while squeezing through an impossible gap along a street I inflicted a small scrape on the RH wing mirror about the size of my little finger nail. I curse lots for not folding it in towards the car.
Our plan now is to head on northwards around the coast of southern Spain taking a little detour into the Sierra Mountains to find what we hope will be a quiet, scenic camp site.
