We more-or-less drove straight down to the beach and had a quick wander around. Not a lot to see but what we saw suited us and we wouldn’t rule out a stay in the area in the future as some of the clifftop places looked interesting and probably had lovely views.

Let’s start with the nice things about Blackpool. The Blackpool Tower is lovely. Great architecture, wonderful decor, stunning views from the tower’s observation deck.

The Blackpool Tower Ballroom was particularly nice and surprisingly large inside. It was nice to be able to wander about freely and enjoy people partaking in tea or dancing.

Blackpool’s got a pier, which was pretty basic but you’ll not find me saying a bad word about piers as I’m a bit of a fan of piers. Why not see for yourself by checking out other piers I’ve liked?

It also had some lovely trams that ran at night, lit up, very pretty.

The rest of Blackpool was a shithole.

There wasn’t a lot to see in Cambrils although we didn’t look too hard; we were mostly keen to seek out something cool to drink by the time we got there.

The beach views along that stretch of coastline were all lovely; open, sandy beaches and gorgeous-looking sea to the horizon.

There were a few examples of some interesting-looking artwork along the beach area too.

The main draw of Lulworth Cove other than knowing you’re getting fresh air and exercise is Durdle Door, the natural, limestone arch jutting out into the sea.

Yes, Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom and therefore foreign, but they speak English, and many of them in an accent that’s actually comprehensible. Not my uncle Stephen, but that’s why his wife Sarah is always around to translate the lilting mumbles.

Ah! Mmmm mm mmm gh, ha ha! Hey! Mmm mmmm, mmng mmm.

He said he flipped the tractor over in the ditch last week.

I know they also speak some form of English in Canada, the USA, and those former colonies in the southern hemisphere, but you can reach Ireland by a reasonably short ferry ride so you can see why it’s foreign, but not really.

And, the fact my uncle’s Irish should also give you a big clue that one of my parents is as well, and that happens to be my mum. Ireland is a second home nation for me and my brother and so any trips there aren’t to foreign parts. That’s like a legal argument or something.

So, Ireland: not foreign. But Mallorca: very foreign.

Clearly, package holidays were becoming easier to book, perhaps through things like Ceefax and Teletext services on the television (I’ve got a vague memory of my parents watching the pages flip over and making notes), and clearly my parents were doing well enough to switch from nobody letting you pay for a thing across the Irish Sea to splashing the cash on flights, transfers, and hotel accommodation in the Mediterranean.

The hotel we stayed at was the Amapola and it appears to still be there in more-or-less a similar layout as my photos and memories attest to, although a little swankier these days. The area of Mallorca in which the Hotel Amapola was located was Alcudia, situated on the northeast coast of the island. The hotel was set around a hundred metres or so back from the beach and on the edge of a decent-sized lake on which it was possible to take out pedalos and pedal around. And we did.

The big draw for my dad, my brother, and me was the swimming pool. You don’t get outdoor swimming pools very often in the UK, or you don’t get many that you’d want to swim in anyway. That’s the sort of experience that really makes it a holiday. You’ll note that my mum wasn’t included in that list of people enjoying the pool. She never did learn to swim, but she still liked it beside the pool, if not in it. She could sunbathe, she could smoke, she could get drinks delivered to her (we were on an all-inclusive basis), she could flirt with the staff in a way that only just stopped from being full-on sexual harassment; she was happy.

My brother learnt to dive while we holidayed at the Hotel Amapola in Alcudia, and I learnt to surf on a lilo. I’m going to be honest with you here and point out that neither skill has really been used since but they say that lilo-surfing is like riding a bike, and once you learn it’s with you for life, so consider me prepared for whatever the world throws at me so long as there’s water around and an inflatable bed to hand.

The hotel guests were a mixture of British and German tourists for the most part. My understanding is that this is broadly true of Mallorca as a whole and that you’ll likely find certain hotels favour one nationality over another in order to simplify needing multiple languages for announcements, menus, entertainment, etc. While the Amapola was mixed during our stay, I believe that it caters more predominantly for Germans these days. But when are these days? I don’t know when you’re reading this. Check it out yourself before booking.

Activities were arranged at the hotel and clearly my dad took part in some of them as we have photographic evidence.

With our holiday being all-inclusive and my family wanting to take full advantage of it – plus we were all new to foreign travel; there weren’t blogs you could read or videos you could quickly call up – most of our time was spent at the hotel. However, we did venture out on occasion.

The lake at the back of the hotel had a path that could be walked around and I recall that we did that. I also remember people jogging along it. Jogging. On holiday. Madness.

As I’ve mentioned before, there was also a beach a short distance from the hotel. Getting to it and the assorted tourist shops, supermarkets, and restaurants that had sprung up to service the beach crowd involved a walk of just a few minutes but part of that was over what seemed to be an outlet for raw sewage. If I think about it then I can still smell it now. The mind’s a weird thing. After our first experience of crossing this stream of evil we took to sprinting across this stretch of road with hands over our mouths and noses.

The beach at Alcudia was amazing. Sand was amazing to people who’d lived in Portsmouth all of their lives and known only pebbles and shingles and saying “Ooh, ouch, ouch, fffuuu…dge!” while trying to get from towels into water. It was golden-white sand in a crescent-shaped bay with warm water. The water was warm partly because it was the Mediterranean in summer, and partly because the water was shallow. Really shallow. Walk out until the people are ants on the beach in order to get enough depth in which to swim sort of shallow. Even my non-swimming mum was able to brave the water, safe in the knowledge that drowning was going to take a lot of effort.

In addition to shops near the beach we also ventured slightly farther afield with trips to Can Picafort, a town just along the coastline, a visit to a nearby Water Park, and even an organised excursion to the Caves of Drach. No pictures of these, though, for some reason, and not much memory of them either. While I’ve considered my parents unadventurous when it comes to holidays in latter years – Greek Islands and the Canaries on firm rotation, it’s seemed – it’s clear from thinking back that they did try to break up the monotony of simply being at a hotel with occasional forays outside. I guess it can’t have been easy to juggle the strange newness of everything, having two children, and ensuring boredom didn’t set in.

In addition to activities in and around the pool each day, Hotel Amapola provided entertainment every evening too. Music was common, but I remember my dad took part in a Mister Amapola contest (likely pushed up to enter by my mum, and he didn’t win), and it looks like everyone enjoyed the drag show.

And please ignore my red nose. I’m half Irish. Sunshine does strange things to us.

We]]> https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/amapola-alcudia-mallorca/feed/ 0 966 https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/skegness/ https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/skegness/#respond Tue, 25 Apr 2017 13:42:29 +0000 https://www.neonbubble.com/?post_type=portfolio_item&p=1064 As part of our occasional visits to the United Kingdom’s seaside resorts out of season we hit Skegness, Lincolnshire in March of 2011.

The beach was sandy and barren, with a flat North Sea to look out on. It may look uninviting but these sorts of wide open views always appeal to me. As a bonus my wife’s eagle eyes spotted a starfish in the sand.

Away from the sands of Skegness beach we took a nose around some of the nearby amusement park and surroundings. Again, while it may look downbeat, barren, and grimy there was still none of that unwelcoming feel that only Blackpool has ever visited upon us when we hit our coastal towns and cities.

It was very windy and salt from the sea was blowing up and onto my camera lens and my wife’s glasses but we took a bit of a walk along the bay then followed a coastal path along one of the bay’s edges.

We weren’t the only people there, although we were the only ones walking along the path. Below, on the rocks along the bay’s edge was a group of people in protective gear. I don’t know what they were up to but they were probably buffeted less by the wind where they were, although possibly wetter from the waves.

It had only been a chance stop which made the discovery of an obvious burial mound that much more exciting for us.

We would later discover that this burial mound in Porth Trecastell was called Barclodiad y Gawres and was a neolithic burial mound sharing some of its design features with similar locations in Ireland.

The main appeal to us in picking Herne Bay for an early pitstop was to check out its pier as we’re rather fond of piers when we’re out and about. Until 1978 the pier at Herne Bay had been the second-longest in the United Kingdom but a storm destroyed the central section leaving part of it isolated at sea and no repairs were ever made. What’s left isn’t much but it was nice to see it anyway on our fleeting trip to the town and I took a handful of photos of and from the shoreline area. We also discovered that Herne Bay had the world’s first purpose-built, freestanding clock tower so our short trip to the small town uncovered quite a bit of interesting history.

On a daily basis we would always spend some time in the streets of Cap de Salou simply because you had to in order to get anywhere; typically we would be venturing into Salou itself, possibly to then head further afield, but we make use of the beaches several times as in addition to the main beach of the area there were a fair number of sheltered coves with walkways down to them and provided a less busy, marginally more private place to expose our skin and frolic in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

Away from the beach areas the Spanish buildings were typical of the area, although there were a few interesting pieces of architecture here and there. There were a few areas with shops, a fairground that was dead during the week we were there, and a bar that we enjoyed a few evenings at.

While the rest of my family would mostly stay in the main beach area and the coves westwards towards Salou if they wanted to swim (when they weren’t back at the hotel) my wife and I were more into exploring and photographing what we found. On one of the days we headed to the main beach and then started clambering along the rocks of the shoreline since we’d seen other people doing so. That led to us finding a whole area of views and construction that the others with us missed. Although they probably weren’t that interested.