Saturday 25th January 2025
Martin heads home later today so need to visit a different beach but still be back in time for his flight and after some debate settled on the nice beach at long bay on the east coast. From memory, though it is on the Atlantic coast it is very well sheltered, but first breakfast.
To set us up for the day and especially Martin, he has a long wait for his “in-flight” meal, Christine produced another fabulous full English; I don’t know how she does it bearing in mind the primitive kitchen and utensils at her disposal.
After clearing up and in Martin’s case, packing, we headed the 13-miles, 35-minute journey across the island and parked. The first thing that caused a little concern was how we were accosted by locals trying to get us to use their beach chairs etc., followed by others telling us which bar to go to. Our memories of this beach are of a nice quiet sandy beach with a gentle walk into the blue sea and a “not-so-good” Italian restaurant, but OMG, the world and his wife was there, it was so busy we thought we were in Benidorm!! We walked along the path behind the beach to see if there was any reasonable space but no, even the Italian restaurant seems to have disappeared, it was end-to-end beach bars with the odd gift shop in-between. We suspect Taxi drivers have discovered this beach and it is now a destination for the cruise ship passengers, what a shame. Without saying anything we looked at each other and did a “U” turn, jumped into the car and re-traced our drive back. After a short discussion we headed back to our local, Runaway beach.
After about an hour of wasted time, we eventually parked in our favourite secluded space under the trees, just behind our adopted “wonky” table that someone had moved back off the sand; cheeky!!! We even enjoyed drinking beers whilst in the sea and it was a lovely, sunny day; typical, Martin leaves us later today!!!!
We certainly prefer this beach as no tourists, only locals and those in the know use it; this is probably due to the difficult shelf about 5-meters into the sea that causes issues when trying to get out, certainly not on the cruise ships “go-to” beach😂😂
Eventually Martin had to say his good-byes as we headed home so he could get himself ready for his 9-hour overnight flight. We also had time for a snack before leaving to the airport.
There is a short route over the big hill behind us but terrible the fiddly streets with some of the largest potholes on the island, or the longer route through St John’s with all its traffic; our usual route. We haven’t used the short cut since the first week we were here in 2020 so as we have time I decided we would try it; surely they have improved it by now, No, it’s still as bad as before but it gave Martin some last minute sights!!!
Dropped him off at VC Bird International Airport, (the only airport) and headed straight back and had a very quiet evening, no alcohol!!!!
Just prior to take off we heard from Martin saying good bye etc., and to inform us he had been “up-graded” to Upper Class; Luck of the devil that man has!!!!!