overseas
Polo olè! Sotogrande on Spain’s Costa del Sol has long been continental Europe’s favourite polo destination. Now the Santa Maria club is bidding to stage international events and its status is rising, says Herbert Spencer
t must be the world’s strangest traffic intersection. Heading from Gibraltar towards Spain, your car is stopped at a red light when suddenly a huge passenger jet roars across your path. Then the traffic light turns green and you drive off, believe it or not, on a road that bisects the airport runway where the jet touched down a minute or so earlier. There can be few more dramatic arrival points anywhere than Gibraltar International Airport. From the air, you see the coast of Morocco eight miles across the straits that divide Europe from Africa and the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean. To the north, there are the coasts and mountains of Spain’s Andalusia. As you land, the sheer face of the massive, 1,400-foot-high Rock of Gibraltar towers above you. The airport runway in the shadow of the Rock was once the site of the now-extinct Gibraltar Polo Club. Britain’s future King George V played polo at Gibraltar in the 1880s while serving as a young Royal Navy officer with the Mediterranean Fleet, and the club was popular with Englishmen between the wars. Sotogrande is only 15 minutes away, a
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HERBERT SPENCER
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Grooms and ponies at Santa Maria Polo Club
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