Wednesday 8th to Thursday 9th June
We waved a sad farewell to Madrid the next day and headed south to Toledo. It’s a very beautiful hill-top old town and well worth a visit. Sadly we had to rush through, but we did manage to spent an hour in the El Greco museum and house, which although a tad odd, was very informative. Dashing back to the van, we discovered our very first parking ticket. Groan. We continued on our way south to Valdepenas to stay with an ex-English student of mine, Violeta, who had kindly invited us to stay. Not only did she provide us with our first proper bed in weeks, but also took us out to meet some of her entertaining friends and an evening of tapas and exquisite wine at the hands of some real connoisseurs. The evening ended with us being firmly told, with wild gesticulations, to throw the parking ticket in the bin, and a mashed discussion about Spanish and English speech impediments. In Spanglish.
Somewhere during the night before, we had all agreed it would be a great idea for D and I to attend Violeta’s English class the next morning to present our trip to the students. We followed her into class, filled with the trepidation of standing inside a school again, particularly as neither D nor I were on our teachers’ favourites list. We stood in front of a room full of teenagers, with our photos and maps at the ready, talking about our journey so far. I thought we’d lost them until I heard some laughter and murmurs of appreciation. The Amsterdam photos had come to our rescue. We kissed the delightful Violeta goodbye and escaped back to the van, to continue the drive south. We had every intention of getting to Cordoba, but due to the morning’s educational activities, we headed towards the aire in Cabra. This was yet another beautiful journey through the ever-changing countryside in Spain. Having spent weeks in the rocky mountains, it was lovely to watch the crooked edges soften into languid rolling hills, and the colour change to the muted beige and green of the olive orchards, punctuated by the occasional field of luminous yellow sunflowers or bright red poppies. The Aire was pleasant and we enjoyed dinner to the lulling strumming and singing of a local boy and his guitar.
3,356 miles
Friday 10th to Sunday 12th June
Left Cabra and drove into see Cordoba, it was too busy and we couldn’t find any parking, so drove round then gave up! Moved onto Seville, of the orange grove fame and pulled into Camping Willson where we spent a well earned arvo by the pool in the sun. Managed to rape the Wifi connection and downloaded loads of our favourite TV shows, broke out the oven we’d bought in Oxford and cooked a non saucepan based meal, yum and curled up to veg out on House.
Found the local bus stop in the morning and headed into Seville, it was baking hot. A beautiful old town feel to most of the city which we wandered around and sized up the queues for the major attractions, it being a weekend the masses were out in force. We rooted out a proper tapas bar in the old streets and waited for the herds to get hungry. Straight into Alcazar, which I quickly began calling Alcatraz and what an experience. Ancient Muslim and Catholicism collided and didn’t fight, the architecture reflected the respect for each party and combined to bring the most intricate relationship of form and design into being. We spent 3 hours working our way through, ending with a walk through a Narnian garden of great beauty and maturity. We retired to a bar and sank a ‘jarre’ of Sangria and people watched.
3,596 miles
Early start and away towards Cadiz, but didn’t make it far before we found a quaint town, Chipiona and it’s stunning beach. We spent the afternoon sunning ourselves and reading, then went to seek sustenance. No place even thinks about serving food before 20:30 and finding that out wasn’t exactly easy! Dinner found us cross referencing all in sundry of words from the menu and our dictionary. We clearly had a great time as we ended up almost coming to blows discussing our ludicrous and fantastic ideas for human evolution... ‘body less brains’ is all I’m saying Lizzie... That night we had our first proper ‘free’ camping experience, just parked up in a quiet street and went to bed... I did not say we all slept securely, but hey!? J
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