Help me Ronda!

Thursday 13th December 2018 - Ronda.

Good weather couldn't last forever...not in December.  Today we have had rain all morning and it is forecast to be cold for the next day or two, although it should dry up.

Over the last couple of days we have travelled inland from Sanlucar.  Tuesday we stopped outside Arcos de la Frontera.  It's a pretty old town that is built up the ridge of a hill.  Plenty of old churches that are all closed.....according to the lady at Tourist Info they are closed till March for renovation.

A place called Arcos needed an arch.

This is the view from the town looking down the valley.  We liked the town but it was a bit quiet, probably because it was dull and cool weather.   Lots of places seem quiet...maybe it's the time of year and there aren't many tourists.  I nipped into another pharmacy to buy some extra reading glasses....I got a reasonable bargain.....two pairs for ten euros.  One pair are red and one pair blue....

Do they suit me?  I don't really want your answer!

Our wild camp location was near the town but down by its lake.

Yesterday we took the hilly twisting road through the 'Pueblo Blancos', white villages.  There were some stunning views of the mountains.

We stopped at a Pueblo Blanco called Grazalema.  Very pretty indeed...the whole village was pristine.  The guide book told us that it is the wettest place in Spain but it stayed dry for us.

Yesterday we arrived at a site just south of Ronda.  No, we haven't nipped over to the Welsh valleys.  It is famous for an old bridge linking the hilltop old town.  I haven't seen it yet....later today, after its stopped raining.  It is supposed to be one of the most popular stunning locations of Spain.  We shall see.  It did remind us of the Beach Boys song, 'Help me Ronda' and we played Beach Boys songs on the way into the area.  We are certainly getting 'Good Vibrations' about it!

Vuelta del Mondo

Monday 10th December 2018 - Sanlucar de Barraneda.

I am struggling under the amount of stuff to tell you.  We have been particularly enjoying the oranges from the site at Jerez.  There is a particular tree that is our favourite and we have been helping ourselves...

They are of course just out of reach so I have had Janice on my shoulders again.  These are sweet and juicy with no pips, whereas some of the others can be quite bitter so we have used those in Gin and Tonics instead of lemons....it's a rather nice alternative!

We have moved over to the last of our sherry towns...Sanlucar de Barrameda.  We are wild camping on a beach car park and arrived in time to see a couple of microlites taking off just in front of us.

The beach is long and golden and we are blessed with the weather again.

We walked along the 'new' prom and then later cycled into the town.  It still seems to have a bank holiday weekend atmosphere.

The town has a Castillo and many Bodegas for Manzanilla sherry production.  There was also the finish line for an ultra marathon, a 50k cycle and a 50k run.  There were lots of people hobbling around.

The town has some interesting history too.  It was the starting point for Columbus' third voyage to the Americas but more significantly it was where Magellan started his 'Vuelta del Mondo' tour around the world.  He set off in 1519 with five ships.  One of his crew members was Juan Sebastian Elcano who mutinied with others off the coast of Argentina.  Some of the mutineers were hung drawn and quartered but Elcano was spared.  The small flotilla sailed the Magellan Straits at the bottom of South America and eventually stopped in the Phillipines.  They got involved in fighting with natives and Magellan died and the ships were reduced to two.  One of the ships stayed and one remaining ship, the Victoria, completed the journey back to Sanlucar with Elcano as the Captian and 18 crew in 1522. What I want to know is why was Magellan credited with the first circumnavigation rather than Elcano?  Maybe because Magellan was a noble born Portuguese man who sailed on behalf of the Spanish Crown, whereas Elcano was a Basque sailor of common family, who merely had determination and guts when it mattered!  Isn't it always the same!

What a good story.

We had a disturbed night by a large tanker that sailed by around 3am.  It took nearly an hour!  It was also very noisy.....well if you park on a beach at a river mouth that is what you might get.  I have also had a bit of an irritated nose causing me to snuffle.  I know I won't get any sympathy.

Today we wanted to have a cycle ride along the coast.

First stop was Chipiona.  I wanted to stop for Chippy Tea but the place seemed totally closed.  It has this lovely lighthouse....and a new prom!

The cycle route took us on to a town called Rota.  It is on the opposite side of the bay from Cadiz and is a lovely little place.

It has a couple of massive beaches.  I think these resorts are kept for the Spanish....they don't seem to feature in British holiday brochures.

I would recommend it for holidays as the beaches are great, the town seems to have quite a variety of bars and shops and historic buildings...and...you can get a cheap ferry across to Cadiz.

I took the chance to buy a chemist product for my sensitive nose.....

This was it.  Now, I don't know what problem the chemist thought I was telling her about but I have been squirting it up my nose rather than anywhere else and I am happy to accept any side effects that might occur!

Did I mention that Rota had a nice new prom?  We bought two large ham sandwiches for 1 euro each and sat on the new prom to eat them, we can confirm they had EU signage for the funding.  We cycled back and hope that tonight we don't get the tanker sailing back again.

Zambombas!

Saturday 8th December 2018 - Jerez.

We have had a nice couple of days in Jerez.  We found out on our arrival that there was a Zambombas festival taking place at various places and times throughout the city centre over the weekend.  We didn't exactly know what it involved but thought it would add some interest to our visit.  

The site was more of a commercial caravan dealers car park than a site but Antonio gave us an enthusiastic welcome and...

.......a free glass of sherry at 11am.  

The site does have a shower, toilets and electricity so it isn't so bad.

We went into the city centre but didn't find any Zambombas.  They were piping music over a loudspeaker system in the centre which sounded like a Tom cat being strangled.....nevertheless, we enjoyed the atmosphere and the public spaces.

This is a famous Domecq building of sherry production fame.  We had a browse around.

The main square.

The sherry cask is Tio Pepe but the man is Manuel Gonzales of the Gonzales-Byass sherry company. Not many people know that Byass was an English businessman.

This was our first of many sherries with the Cathedral behind us in the glorious sunshine.

We still didn't find any Zambombas but there was a large gathering in a particular square and sherry was 1 euro each.  We also had some chickpea stew.

On the way home we were tempted by Hornazo.  It was a bit of a sampling day.

From what knowledge I have gleaned of the different sherry types...

Manzanilla and Fino are dry sherries, Amontillado is a medium, Oloroso and Dulce are sweet and Muy Dulce is very sweet.  The colour of the sherry starts pale for the dry sherry and graduates to very dark for the Muy Dulce.  It is only made in three places in this area of Spain, Jerez, El Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlucar de Barrameda.  There is also a 'Solera' system for barrelling the sherry.  Apparently the oldest barrels are on the bottom with the progressively younger sherry barrels placed on top and they take a maximum of one third from the oldest barrels and then replace it with the sherry from the barrel above.  Maybe it helps them keep some consistency of taste between the various years?

We carried on some tasting back at the van and compared it to the Pineau we bought in France.  The Pedro Ximenez is Muy Dulce and is like no sherry I have tasted.  It is thick and black and rich.  It is more of a desert wine but can be used on ice cream and is lovely with coffee or chocolate.

We went back in to Jerez on Saturday (Day of the Immaculate Conception) and eventually found some Zambombas....

People sit around in a circle, some men thrust their bamboo canes up and down in their garden urn and it makes a drumming kind of noise.  They repeatedly have to put extra water on their hands (I'm not sure if it is to stop the hands from rubbing or whether it is to lubricate the pole or the stretched cloth?  Anyway, they all have a good sing song and everyone joins in the singing and or clapping hands.  It is difficult for us to know exactly what they were singing but it sounded a bit like.....'One Man Went to Mow' or 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' or 'Uncle Tom Cobbly' or 'I am the Music Man' or 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'.  I think you probably get the idea.  I also guess that the Zambombas are the garden urns. Anyway, it was all very traditional and community spirited.  It did tend to be the older people involved in the singing.  We clapped along and I refrained from shouting "Ole" at the end!

I think I could get the hang of it with practice.

We have enjoyed Jerez.  We didn't see the famous equestrian school where they have the 'dancing' Andalucian horses but as you know we are not on holiday so we can't shell out for all these things.

On the Immaculate Conception front.....there is no news.....and in this case, no news is good news!

Marmalade Jam.

Thursday 6th December 2018 - Visit to Seville.

We had to get up in the dark...what a shock....to catch the train from El Puerto de Santa Maria to Seville.  We actually took our bikes on the train with us as we thought we could move around easier in the city.

It was a fairly quick journey, about an hour and ten minutes.  Unknown to us it turned out to be Constitution Day and therefore a public holiday, so after a quiet start the city became quite busy with locals as well as tourists.

We didn't try to do too much but we wanted to have a good overview of the city centre attractions.

Janice was trying to decide which horse and carriage to choose!  

This is the Giralda Tower that is part of the Cathedral.  It is mainly a moorish style with a neo classical top!  

It is difficult to get a picture of the Cathedral that shows it all because it is so big....according to the guide book it is the biggest Cathedral in Europe.

It is impossible to photograph it with any justice to show its magnificence.  They have lots of paintings by Murillo who lived locally.  He seemed to be very good at painting Archbishops who became Saints!

It has the mausoleum of Christoper Columbus, not a bad one either.....

We didn't pay to go into the Real Alcazar (Moorish Fortress).

There was a bit of a queue but we later sneaked into the exit area and I pinched a couple of oranges.  I could use them for marmalade!

We had a good walk around.  Saw the bullring and the Torre del Oro, Tower of Gold by the River Guadaquivir.

Our biggest wow factor was probably the Plaza de Espana which was built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.

It is a complete semi circular building of beauty with fantastic ceramic tiles depicting regional scenes of Spain. There were Spanish guitar players and Flamenco dancers around too.

It was lovely to see the Spanish people at leisure.  The atmosphere was very calm and peaceful despite the numbers of people. There are many more places to see but too much for us to try to cover in one day.  We did manage to squeeze in some tapas for lunch, including garlic prawns, cod in tomato sauce, pigs cheek and...

It is fried Aubergine chips with a gazpacho sauce, nice.  No sherry today though.  One thing we noticed in all the restaurants and souvenir shops......you couldn't buy a jar of marmalade anywhere.  They are missing a trick!

We considered doing the Basilica de la Macarena but Janice already knew the dance moves, so we didn't bother.

We are looking forward to a second public holiday on Saturday....to celebrate the 'Immaculate Conception'.....so check the blog on Sunday for exciting/surprising news!!

Sherry, Jerry?

Wednesday 5th December 2018 - El Puerto de Sainte Marie via Cadiz.

Our plans have been constantly been evolving.  I chatted with the lady at the site reception at Trafalgar and she suggested a coulpe of things.  She told me of a car park on the beach south of Cadiz where camper vans stay.  She also told me that Seville was really beautiful (I knew that already) but she told me how easy it was to go on the train for a day.  We hadn't intended to go to Seville and we had thought we might save it for a special city break!  More on this later.

We drove up to the car park she recommended south of Cadiz.  It turned out to be a Mecca for surfers.

We managed to get a parking place with this view.  The surf was up and Janice was enjoying the sight of young surfers showering and stripping.  I don't blame her.  There was some road noise but the place was so convenient for the bike ride along a lovely 'new' promenade with 'new' cycle path into Cadiz.

We had been tipped off abut some of the delights of Cadiz and we weren't disappointed.

We called at the 'free' Teatro Romano' and admired the chargeable Cathedral from the outside.  

As an aside (or rather me), had wanted to start sampling the sherry in this part of the world.  So, we tried our first 'Fino' (Dry) Sherry sitting at a cafe opposite the Cathedral.

Two Sherries = 3 euro.  Not bad.  Of course sherry is called Jerez after the town it is made and Jerez is pronounced 'Hereth'.  Janice has a little standing joke, at the mention of Sherry she says, "Sherry, Jerry" in a posh voice, after the 'Good Life' series where the next door neighbours are snooty.  We have actually bought a bottle of sherry for 3 euros (maybe the cafe price wasn't so good after all).

We had a further tour of the city.

This is the monument of the Constitution which was signed in 1812 at Cadiz, which was briefly the capital of Spain.  We returned to our van and had no problem with the traffic noise.  We intended to return to the city in the morning to see more.

This morning we cycled in again about 9.30am (early for us).  We saw plenty more.

The main land gate into Cadiz.

The main square with the Town Hall in the background.  We also bagged a couple of baroque churches.

And went to the  market hall where we bought some 'morcilla', a Spanish black pudding for later.  You can see it hanging up over the counter.  The fish stalls were probably the best I have ever seen.

There was one after the other of beautifully presented fish of all kinds.  We even saw a swordfish head, including the sword!

Can you believe it, we had our first 'churros' since we came to Spain.  We were a tiny bit disappointed because I thought churros were all sugar coated but these were savoury!  We got plenty though for 1.10 euro.  I sound like a bit of a cheap skate don't I?

Back to the van and we had a swim in the Atlantic and an hour of sun bathing on our beach.  Mid afternoon we drove off to El Puerto.  Another wild camp down by the beach.  It wasn't far, in fact we could see Cadiz across the bay.

We are the only van this time and no traffic noise.

El Puerto is actually a decent sized town from where Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to the Americas.  I'm not sure if I mentioned previously that the Spanish call Columbus, Christopher 'Colon'.  It dawned upon me that is why we call Empire territories the Colonies, and where the word 'Colonial' comes from.  I never thought of that before!

We had a look around the town.....nice beach, lovely new promenade, nice old town and harbour....very historical too.

Maybe Columbus sailed from this point?

There is a very big bull ring and a lovely old church.

Our meal was a mixed tapas including the morcilla.

Washed down with a little Jerez Fino.

Tomorrow we have booked a day return rail ticket to Seville.  We may have to set our alarm to get up?