Not quite but the holiday surely tried its hardest that year

 

It was the start of a new term in the UK so I headed off to a place I knew well but stayed in a hotel only viewed from the outside....up until now.

Until recently I had stopped at the flat owned by Mrs Fry at the other end of the bay in Torreblanca. I wanted a change and had seen the Hotel Angela as I had walked along the bay to the supermarket and Las Ramblas for a coffee and a slice of their fresh cream cake studded with fresh fruit and clear jelly. Delightful.

I suspect I had only been there a matter of a day at the most so as to gain the best prices from the sudden, and quite dramatic seasonal drop in prices, but already the temperatures were soaring and the beach was hot, hot, hot!

The beaches this end are more popular with families as it's close to the ice cream, Mac Donald's and the like, but I liked it because it was closer to the harbour, and that was somewhere I always enjoyed walking (when it was cooler that is).

I had been in the sea and on the beach for most of the day and was on my way back to the hotel. Hot and sweaty, I really fancied a shower and then retire for a few hours by the pool with a cool glass of something. Later I would take a stroll to the Chinese supermarket and pick up a can of Coke Zero and sit on the sea wall so as to watch the world go by. 

Not so long ago we were enjoying temperatures similar to this, here, in the UK. I was lying in a paddling pool designed for dogs (plastic a great deal more sturdy and to be honest good fun). My outlook this year was of bees and bumbles buzzing around the annuals in my garden bed and listened to my neighbours as they carried on with their lives.

I smiled, I knew where I would rather be and closing my eyes imagined myself lying in the shallows on the beach in Fuengirola, Puerto Cruz, Teguise or on the island of Fuerteventura.

Teguise beach, chasing fish

So much came flooding back...

 My house resembles a travelogue of places visited; I print them off on ordinary photocopy paper and paste them on my walls. It's a lovely way to permanently live my holidays, but even I can't display all the places and all the memories.

I also have a series of slides running as the background on my desk computer which change every ten seconds and it was during one of these I noticed a series of photographs I had completely forgotten.

 

Taken in 2016, I was on my way down to the beach for an early stroll before I had a decent coffee at the cafe along the bay.

As I took my usual route, along the river overflow, I came across a herd of goats happily grazing. Although you can't see them here, the chickens were there too with their accompanying cockerel keeping a watchful eye.

He saw me before I saw them to be honest and gave the alarm call. The hens gathered their chicks together and scurried under the nearest caster oil plant whilst the cockerel gave a menacing eye.

Being polite I skirted him and his precious group, moving quietly among the goats, who, I would add, were not in the least bit interested in me.

It reminded me of when my mother and I had come to Tenerife all those years ago and had had to shoo goats out of the way to get to the beach even then. 

I emerged from under the roadway bridge and entered the gardens; my first sight of the sea in all her glory; she was calm that day and I knew later I would be in there, enjoying the spray and the waves.

My eyes filled with the sights of Puerto Cruz, I could smell the air and hear the buzz of the bees, the crash of the waves on the black, shingle beach; what a memory to relive.