It was another warm and sunny day so this time I made sure I had plenty of water, including a few ice cubes in my souvenir water bottle, which we were given on registration on Wednesday.
Here are some of my photos.
It was before dawn when we left again.
Today we started going through the old town.
Some of us were short enough to get under the flowers hanging over the path.
I liked the trumpet flowers.
This was to be our first climb. Down under the motorway then up that hill on the other side.
The the low sun behind us, we had fun with the shadows. I think this was supposed to be YMCA.
Checkpoint 1 was a welcome respite, but we were not at the top yet and Cathy and I left Miranda, Jane and Joyce to have a coffee... we knew they would catch us later.
We were rewarded for our efforts with some lovely views.
Below us, we could see the first of the 20km walkers heading for the bottom of the climb.
On our way back down there was a nice display of different coloured bouganvilleas.
We left the 20km route and passed what would be our 2nd checkpoint when we had completed the next up and down. I grabbed an extra water bottle on my way by.
Stopping to take photos is a great excuse to pause for breath on the climbs.
Again we got some nice views before descending.....
...to checkpoint 2.
Joyce and Jayne had overtaken me and were just leaving the checkpolint as I arrived. We carried on descending around Santa Clara golf.
I followed along behind and then caught up with Jane and Joyce. They were worried we were lost. We hadn't passed any waymark signs for ages. But I had my map of the route with me and we worked out the way to go. And, yey! Here was a sign again. We were on track.
Shortly afterwards we passed the hospital. Little did we know at the time, but Chelle was in the A&E department as we passed. Just over the footbridge over the motorway just after the hospital, she got her phone out to text us to warn of the missing signs and had a fall which gave her a nasty gash in her hand. Ow!
We crossed the motorway..
..and carried on down to the beach.
Walking along the edge we found some harder sand, but had to do the odd side-step to avoid the waves coming in.
Shortly before the end we came across Sue and Ian and stopped to say hello.
Hooray. The finish. Getting there just before 3pm it had been a long walk. But then I checked the distance, we had done 19.4 miles.
We caught up with everyone else and enjoyed some beers and music before dispersing...
..and then meeting up to go to the Banana Tree later.
We had a good view of the sun setting.
...and could see Gibraltar in the distance.
By this time Chelle had joined us. Not only had she finished the walk from the hospital, she had added her extra miles for her marathon distance.
The sun had gone down now.
Nicky and I decided to walk Chelle back to her hotel... but not without stopping off for a nightcap first.
Wow. What a day! I was glad of the extra water on the walk and got through over 6 bottles. 2 days down, so we are halfway. Some more ups and downs tomorrow, I think..
You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.
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