Walking with Lucy.....

I'm sorry that there are no dolls in today's post but hope you'll enjoy some photos from my walking over the last few days.  The weather has been beautiful since last Saturday and walking has been a real pleasure...until I developed a really heavy cold, so haven't walked today.  Typical me, I'm fine all through the wet winter and then as soon as the sun finally comes out so I develop a cold!!  Oh well!

Saturday I took this photo of the mountains behind us, you can see snow on the top, so it must have been pretty chilly overnight, but it was gone again by Sunday morning!!

On Sunday I walked quite late in the day and on the final part we walked along the beach, the sunset was really pretty.....

Lucy loves walking on the beach as long as we don't go too close to the sea, she really does not 'do' water!!!  But give her a smelly old dead fish to roll in and she's in her element!!!

"Who? Me?"

Wednesday Lucy and I walked up to the Torre de Jaral which is located above the sea on the edge of the cliff, I've mentioned it several times here on my blog and shared photos.  You can see it here on the cliff in the distance being caught by the setting sun on our previous night's walk....

The Mediterranean was particularly calm and beautiful, and there were lots of fishing boats going about their business....

 

This bush was full to bursting with bumble bees!  There were hundreds of them, and the noise was quite amazing!  

And not far away, high in the campo, there are some hives that have been set up, I have no idea who owns them, but I suspect the honey from these bees will be particularly tasty as there are so many different wild flowers from which they can collect their pollen!

I don't know if you can see this but the water here is so incredibly clear that you can see all the rocks beneath the surface, they really shimmer in the sunlight....I really do need to take my proper camera out walking with me but am always worried that 1) it'll be too much to carry and 2) it might get lost or damaged!  

 Lucy loves to sniff EVERYTHING, here she is amongst the wild flowers.....

Further on I could see what I thought were unusual looking bright red flowers in the distance, they seemed to follow the path that we had to take...however, on closer inspection, I saw that they were in fact tomatoes!  With a few aubergines, courgettes and cucumbers thrown in for good measure!  At first I thought perhaps there'd been an accident and a vehicle carrying them had tipped over or something, but it turns out they're fruits that are 'past their best' and cannot be sold, so they're thrown down for the local goats!!!  I'm sure they enjoy them very much!

Lucy certainly found them interesting......

 

Further along I spotted these beautiful poppies growing around the bottom of a particularly vicious looking cactus!

And these pretty little purple flowers..... 

On the way back along the beach, I spotted this rather large fellow sitting on a rock sunning himself, I have no idea what type of bird he is and this is the best photo I could get with my iPhone on zoom, so not great.....I'm thinking he is a Cormorant from looking him up on Google......

I've not seen him around before but the usual birds are about, we have a lot of Hoopoes, Swallows, blackbirds, masses of our local green parrots (Monks Parakeets and Quakers) and this week I actually saw a very pretty Rosella parrot, which was probably someone's escaped pet.  I tried to catch him but he was obviously not wanting to be caught, but I've not seen him since.  He looked just like this one.....(not my photo)....

And to finish with our final lap of our walk......looking west with Malaga in the very far distance....

And east towards Torre del Mar......

 

Well that's all I have time for as it's quite late and I need my beauty sleep, LOL!!!  So I wish you all a very good night/day, depending on where you are.  Thank you for visiting.

Big hugs, Sharon xx

Introducing....Torre del Mar

On my morning walk today, I took loads of photos and decided that I would do a post of our local town as it is a really attractive place, I thought people might like to see it.  I sometimes wonder if when some people think of the Costa del Sol, so they visualise drunk tourists, British fish and chip shops and noisy discos!  Fortunately Torre del Mar is not a bit like that!

Torre del Mar is our nearest town and is situated 28km east of Malaga on the coast.  It has a population of approx 20,000 and is a very popular holiday resort with Spanish people.  It has the name Torre del Mar (tower of the sea) because it had many watchtowers along the coast during Roman and Moorish times. Today it has a 26m high lighthouse situated on the edge of the promenade.  During the 19th century, the area was the centre of the sugar industry whereas nowadays they grow mangoes, avocados, kiwis and salad crops, because of the  tropical climate.

The most outstanding feature is its sea front, which is about 2km long, and is apparently considered the longest in the Mediterranean! The beach is very wide, more than 50 meters in many places.  The whole promenade is planted with flowers and palm trees, making it a very attractive area to stroll along at any time of year.  This promenade is also lined with lots of seafood restaurants or chiringuitos as they are called here.  The photo below was taken at approx 9am this morning.

The town is busy and has LOADS of small shops, but this post is really just to show you the promenade area which is also very popular with joggers, people walking their dogs (as dogs are not allowed on the beach except for the 'dog beach') and cyclists who have their own cycle paths.

Most people start at one end of the prom and continue walking along to the busy fishing port of Caleta de Velez and then walk back to their original starting point, a distance of about 7km.  This is what Lucy, my Miniature Pinscher and I do when we choose this route for our morning walk.  We can watch the sunrise from our starting point, there are some beautiful sunrises seen from here.  Here is this mornings:

The temperature when we set out was a quite chilly 8C, but it soon warmed up and by the time we got to the end of our route it was 20C.....and that was at 10am!  It's why we have to set out earlyish as I don't want Lucy getting overheated.

All along the route there are different beach areas, special beaches allocated for different groups of people, or different activities.  The seniors beach has wooden gazebos with  picnic benches where older folk can be seen sitting chatting or playing dominoes!  Of course this time of the morning it's pretty empty except for a few people using the gym equipment on the seniors beach.

There are several areas with play equipment especially for children....

There is even a 'Biblio Playa' which means 'book beach' and you can see below the lovely wooden benches and armchair where I suspect local teachers bring groups of their pupils for reading...what a lovely environment to have a reading class!!

And safety too is big here.....there are First Aid and lifeguard stations all along the beach, including this one, which would be hard to miss!!!

All the way along the prom there are examples of local art.  What would normally be the plain back walls of the fishermens buildings, are covered with art!

Here are some examples, some are laminated, whilst others are made from ceramic tiles: (unfortunately because of the laminate there is a lot of reflection!)

I guess you can't have art without a contribution from probably the most famous Malagueño, Pablo Picasso....a ceramic tile version of his famous painting Guernica.

Even the public bathrooms are attractively decorated, and although I haven't got photos here, take my word for it, they are incredibly clean!!

These two below were taken a different day.....I missed them this morning!!! Must have been half asleep :)

Plus statues and fountains:

The fountain below is either new or having a makeover, you can see the workmen are still working on it,  the star shaped pool is completely tiled in tiny mosaic tiles!

This fountain is dedicated to the Virgen of Carmen, who is the patron saint of the town, and also the patron saint of mariners and seafarers!

 Also along the promenade is the lighthouse mentioned above, as well as the bandstand where they often have live music in the summertime!

Finally at the very easterly end of the promenade, so the town of Torre del Mar joins the area of Caleta de Velez where there is a busy fishing port and marina....

It is when we reach this point that we turn back and do the whole walk in reverse!

"Yes Lucy, we only have to walk back to about here.........!!!!!"

 
Well I hope you have enjoyed our little walk along the promenade at Torre del Mar!!

Thanks very much for visiting, have a lovely weekend!

Hugs Sharon x