A good start to 2017

Friday 13th and Saturday 14th January 2017

Club la Santa, Lanzarote

Welcome to the first blog of our holiday to Lanzarote. If you're not interested in sports and fitness then you will probably want to skim through this trip's blogs, although you shouldn't skim too fast or you may miss the occasional amusing anecdote and profound statement that have little or nothing to do with sport.

Our journey started with a flight leaving a snow covered Manchester on Friday the 13th.  Our plane had to be de-iced twice before it could take off, and the air steward almost fell out whilst closing the door in strong winds. Friday the 13th is not the best day to fly you might think, and it was not helped that some idiot (me) had booked a flight at 6:40am, which meant we had to get up at 3:00am, which was awful. On the positive side, we landed in Lanzarote at about 11am, which was nice.
We picked up our hire car from the airport and were at our accommodation by 12:30pm, which made the early start slightly worthwhile.

Club la Santa is a sports and fitness resort on the west coast of Lanzarote. It's more expensive than your regular resort in the Canary Islands, but the price includes free use of all facilities and equipment for over 30 sports. We've come here to try and get our 2017 off to a fit and healthy start. We didn't make a particularly good start on Friday, as we were both exhausted, but we did eat loads of food and drank some beer. And then slept for about 10 hours solid.

Today (Saturday) we did much better. We started off with a 10km run as part of my London marathon training, which was lovely as it was about 18 degrees. Then we had breakfast and showers. Then we borrowed some kayaks and spent an hour paddling round the lagoon here. We're going on a sea kayaking trip next week, and I wanted to brush up on my paddling skills, as the last time I got in a kayak I capsized instantly into the freezing water of Bala lake due to high winds and extreme wobbliness. Fortunately the waves were not very big today and there were no disasters. Then we had lunch before going out on a 25km beginners road bike tour.

We were issued with Cannondale road bikes and set off as part of a group of about 20, most of whom did not seem to be beginners at all. To be fair, we're not beginners either, but we weren't sure whether we were good enough for the intermediate ride, which is considerably longer, and faster. I'd set the saddle height on my bike too high, and I think chosen the wrong size bike as well. Claire was fine, but I had to lower my saddle 3 times, and am now suffering from painful lady bits as a result of not getting it right the first (or second, or third) time. I am crossing my fingers that this hopefully minor injury won't affect the mountain bike tour we have booked for Monday!

We saw our first interesting bird of the holiday on the ride - a hoopoe, which we have only ever seen once before, but this time was better because the bird swooped across the road right in front of us, and then landed right next to us with a beak full of worms. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo though.

After only our second shower of the day we had dinner in one of the restaurants on the resort (we haven't bothered to venture out to the local town yet). The prices on site are not particularly cheap, but you do get a lot of food, and not just cheap plate fillers like chips. I ordered grilled calamari, expecting to get a few calamari rings with my Canarian potatoes and veg. What I actually got was a whole grilled squid's body, which I managed to get through, but only just. Claire had burger and chips served with a side of food envy.

We've now retired to our apartment to drink cheap wine from the onsite shop, which is not too bad considering the bottle cost €2.70. I suspect we will be in bed for 9:30pm again as we are both tired out.

Tomorrow it is Claire's birthday, and we are (hopefully) having a scuba diving introduction lesson in the swimming pool first thing, before doing some more kayaking or stand up paddle boarding, followed by a swim and finally a running technique workshop. Then we are going into town to a seafood restaurant that has been recommended to me for Claire's  birthday meal.

I will try and get some photos tomorrow, as we completely forgot about cameras today until the hoopoe was too quick for us.