modernisme

Christmas trip

After a week of brilliant music, family and theatre in London I now find myself in Alicante.

Thursday saw neighbours Les, Sean and Maria and me make our way to our local wine bar and then to Blackheath Halls to see the Andy Sheppard quartet. Dee and I and a colleague had recorded an hour long to show with Andy back in 1999 and guitarist John Parricelli was still part of the group.

He is still a complete master of the soprano and tenor saxophones and was given great accompaniment from Dudley Foster on bass and Nic France on drums in an evening of varied old and new material. He made me cry by playing ‘Dancing Man and Woman’ which Dee and I had as our play out music from our wedding back in 2001. Happy memories through the tears.

My friends Anna and Lisa ventured up from Ramsgate to see Ute Lemper visiting Marlene Dietrich. They had a spare ticket and invited me to join them.

I didn’t really know what to expect but thoroughly enjoyed Ute telling us about a three hour long telephone conversation she had with Marlene in Paris. She had written to convey her horror at the press calling Ute ‘The new Marlene’ and the diva had phoned her back. This story interspersed with the great songs made for a most enjoyable evening

Sunday was little short of a miracle when son and daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren and I were all free for lunch at the same time. Amazing fun and great stories all round. A great start to Christmastime.

Monday saw me go with Frances to the press night of Indian Ink at the Hampstead Theatre. It coincided with Tom Stoppard’s funeral and we were a bit worried about how it might affect the cast, especially Felicity Kendall. They were all superb and particularly Felicity playing the older role rather than the one of poet Flora Crewe she had created twenty years ago and Ruby Ashbourne Serkis playing Flora in front of Felicity. Gavi Singh Chera was also excellent as the beguiling – to Flora – Indian painter. As always the witticisms and hilarity were countered with serious debate about the role of Britain in Empire. Not his best play but definitely worth seeing for the acting and the brilliant set and lighting design – oh and the incidental music is good too.

I had a lovely lunch with Camilla Reeve the publisher of BBPC’s anthology Home and Belonging. It was a generous thank you from her for my chairing the discussion panel at her literary festival back in November. An enjoyable discussion ranging over many topics.

Wednesday was at the Almeida for Christmas Day, the second play in a month featuring a Jewish family (not) celebrating Christmas. This was provocative with references to Gaza and antisemitism, family bickering and made some good points but for me was a bit disjointed and I felt needed longer in development to get a better play out.

Twelfth Night came early with Frances, Farzana, Richard and me heading to the Barbican, some of us via the excellent Jugged Hare for dinner. This was the RSC`s production starring Freema Agyemang as Olivia and Sam West as Malvolio with Gwyneth Keyworth at Viola and Michael Grady-Hall as a brilliant Feste – brush up your juggling skills if you’re in the front rows! It was hilarious, but also touching, emotionally grabbing and was spoken with such clarity that your respect and admiration for the genius Bard of Avon rocketed even higher.

I had Friday at home to tidy up the place and think about packing. Saturday was my last Watford match of the year and we actually won 1-0 against Stoke, so another good omen for the festive season. Sunday evening I drove to Stansted in a horrific downpour which made my arrival in Alicante so welcome. I’d been equivocating about coming away for Christmas this year and am already glad I finished up with a decision to make the trip. I checked in to a very pleasant well-situated hotel where I think for the first time in my life my room is right opposite the lift not the 200 yards race I had to make last night at Stansted. Legs thus spared, I went walkabout to get my bearings in a city I have only been to once so long ago that not much sticks in the mind. A quick tapas lunch with a beer confirmed the decision to make the trip. The bar had no menu but served tapas of the day on wood blocks and a bit like Yo Sushi, they count up the blocks to make your bill. With a big party you’d get a Jenga game thrown in. The Christmas spirit and the love of tapas were well in evidence.

Further down towards the Mediterranean the welcome was even clearer at the end of the palm-lined promenade.

I then crossed to the marina to select my yacht when I win the lottery. It’s a very pleasant harbour to be further explored tomorrow.

And on the way back up (gentle slopes) through town there are some lovely examples of modernisme architecture which I shall also explore further.

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Last day observations

Despite not being in the best of health throughout, it has been a great stay in this wonderful city. I’ve visited familiar places and several new ones, heard great music and seen amazing art. I need to catch a train from Passeig de Gracia around 14:30 to get to the airport in good time for security and check in so decide to forgo further wide exploration today and walk about other part of the Eixample. Apart from the Berasategui restaurants, there are other reasons to come back – I didn’t do the ‘immersive Dali experience’ at IDEAL, the Digital arts Centre, I didn’t get to the European Museum of Modern Art and of course I’d love to go to the Liceu Opera house again to hear something to my taste performed.

One of the things I love are elegant shop signs from the golden age. Dee had an obsession with door knobs and knockers, mine is with shopfronts. Dee also loved hat shops so there’s one here for her! I collected a few more this morning as I strolled the nearby streets. It’s a little more cloudy today but still pleasantly warm although down a bit from yesterday’s 22 degrees (that’s 72 Daisy).

I also snapped a few more of the elegant houses that jump out from the streets at regular intervals. It’s a city where you need to be sure to look up as you walk through the streets.

But I needed to look down at the top of the Passeig as I came across this excellent manifesto which is something that as a sort of creative I feel very strongly about. It’s set in the pavement outside a Barcelona city office.

Just round the corner at the Palau Robert a poster for an exhibition reminded me of a day in the spring when Frances, Rosa and I went to see Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers. Alongside the usual convoluted emotional stories of two women, he finally addresses the horrors of the Franco era. The film involves a search for the body of a great grandfather in a mass grave. The poster examines 85 years of trying to reunite families with lost relatives. So far of the 114,000 ‘disappeared’ only 19,000 have been recovered. As Almodovar said in a Guardian interview, ‘Now is the time to remember Franco lest his victims be forgotten’.

Inside the Palau is a much happier image – Barca’s first heroes. There are displays of other sports – boxing and motor sport very popular – and fashion during the early part of the 20th century. This is the 1919-20 season team that won the Catalunya championship as well as that of all Spain. The caption claims that the 20s was the decade when football became a mass popular sport.

Sipping a last beer before boarding the train I noted that at none of the bars I’d been to had I been offered the little complimentary dish of olives, crisps or nuts that had been common on previous trips. Now whether this is a factor of the cost of living crisis or just a metropolitan thing I’m not sure. Certainly the news programmes were filled with analysis of the government’s crisis measures – reducing VAT on food staples, capping fuel prices and handouts of 200 euros to those most in need as well as some measures to encourage businesses to recover. I didn’t find Barcelona quite as depressing as London from the point of view of rough sleepers and boarded up shops – but I was in a rather posh part of the city for most of my trip. And as I descended to the train station my last view was of Gaudi’s brilliant Casa Mila known as La Pedrera (the stone quarry). It was his final civic architecture before devoting his life to the Sagrada Familia. A fitting end to an excellent week in this great city.

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Music, markets and Moritz

I’ve managed to do a few things I wanted to experience while in Barcelona but a combination of occasional hip gyp (osteoarthritis quite advanced) and less breath from the lingering flu, I’ve not been roaring about the place as I maybe would have in the past. I love the fact that the city is so well supplied with benches so I can sit and take a rest when necessary. Isabel Allende has a fine quote in her book I just read A Long Petal of the Sea: ‘Pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional’. As I set out on Christmas Eve to enjoy the guided tour of the Palau de la Musica, I was able to have a coffee, perch on a bench and contemplate life at a slower pace.

Benches and cafes on the Rambla de Catalunya.

It also gives me a chance to look around and see elegant buildings like this. There have been some rather (imho) unsuitable replacements and refurbishments to the classy streets of the Eixample, the area into which the wealthy of the city expanded in the early twentieth century with its grid of vertical and horizontal streets so it’s hard to get lost. Enough rambling – on to the Palau.

At the Palau, I join a group of two Americans, one Hungarian and eight Chinese – probably statistically representative of relative populations. Our guide is Marta who is Catalan and a pianist with the organisation who also used to play cello but gave it up as too difficult. As often, the tour begins with a ten minute video of the history and diverse nature of music played at the hall – Montserrat Caballe and Pablo Casals of course but also Ute Lemper and Herbie Hancock. Marta returns and asks if any of us has ever been so I can show off with my attendance two nights ago. I can also answer her enquiry as to whether anyone knows the architect. I do – it was Lluis Domenech i Muntaner, another of the famous group of modernista artists, which included Gaudi. Together they designed the Catalan equivalent of art nouveau or Jugendstil elsewhere in Europe. What I couldn’t answer was how long it took to build – a staggering two and a half years. My guess would have been ten. There were obviously lots of wealthy merchants investing their profits from the Americas in a cultural centre of some magnificence in Barcelona.

A ticket window, roof detail and the main entrances wide and high enough for horse-drawn carriages to enter.

The interior is just breathtaking. Every surface is decorated with trencadis, there are thousands of plaster roses – the flower of Catalunya – and sculpture and plasterwork of great significance. There are lots of red and white cross flags which are familiar in England especially around football tournaments. St Jordi (George) is the patron saint of Catalunya too. Lluis certainly thought about what he was building. Alongside the name of the Palau are the words Orfeo Catalana reflecting the origins of the hall as a place for choirs to practice and sing – well they couldn’t watch Strictly or The Voice so they had – and still have – lots of local choirs. I’m hoping to see some of them at the special Sant Esteve (Boxing Day) concert which is said by some I’ve spoken to to rival New Year’s Day in Vienna. As with the exterior a few photos won’t do the venue justice but let’s just say a bust of Beethoven surmounted by horse-riding Valkyries on one side of the stage and sculptures of all the muses behind the performers on stage make this a very special place. The glass sunburst at the centre of the ceiling which allows natural light through is a masterpiece of both design and engineering.

Some of the muses and another flying horse.

After a coffee in the cafeteria, I set off through the old city centre towards the cathedral – I’ve never seen it without works going on, maybe one day. Then I just have to stop for a beer in Plaza Reial a long-time favourite. One of the limited advantages of travelling alone is that I’m doing far more reading than usual. Instead of chatting over a beer, out comes the kindle. So far I’ve read William Boyd’s rambunctious The Romantic in which we meet Byron in Italy and discover the source of the Nile. This was followed by Kate Atkinson’s fabulous Shrines of Gaiety featuring the dodgy world of nightclubs in interwar London. And as mentioned before, Isabel Allende’s epic Long Petal of the Sea which begins with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War in Catalunya and escape to France and from there to new lives in Chile only to become involved in another coup there. And now I’m enjoying Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa – another tantalising excursion into the strange world of Japanese fiction. And the Mcs are lined up next Ian McEwan and two from Cormac McCarthy.

From here it’s a short step along the Rambla to the Liceu opera house which sadly had nothing I wanted to see this trip and then for a walk through the fabulous Boqueria market. I’ve probably rambled on about my love of local markets and my regrets at living in a hotel – maybe an apartment next time. The colour, the noise, the camaraderie of the market is infectious. No room at the market bars though so I found a small bar in a side street for some gambas al ajillo and esparragos.

El Liceu, entrance to and interior of the Boqueria market.

I have another short stroll to my next destination MACBA the museum of contemporary art in Barcelona. It’s new to me although it opened in 1995 so we must have missed it on previous trips. It’s a great white palace with a warning to watch out for skateboarders on the approach – what is it about art centres and skaters? One attractive aspect is that it has slopes not steps to link the various levels – reminding me a bit of the XXI gallery in Rome I visited in 2017. My appreciation of cutting-edge contemporary artwork is somewhat unrefined but I found two of the artists exhibiting here quite affecting. The Colombian Maria Teresa Hinchcapie which involved performance art, exploration of every day objects and photography gave me plenty to think about. Cynthia Marcelle is a Brazilian artist who had given a number of collaborators some materials to arrange as they wished. The result reminded me of a Cornelia Parker explosion of objects. There was another exhibit based on a Mexican Mixe myth which I found impressive in scale and impenetrable in meaning.

MACBA exterior, Hinchcapie video, Mixe myth and Marcelle room.

In the permanent collection were a number of pieces I really enjoyed – a Tapies bed and a series of pages taken from a book as if they had been typed without a ribbon so that light projected the text onto the wall. It’s by Mar Arza and is called Nada reiterada (nothing repeated). Most enjoyable for a bibliophile.

The evening was rounded off in a convenient microbrewery Moritz opposite the hotel which was one of the few places open on Christmas Eve. It has a fine selection of house beers – lagers, IPAs a red IPA and a porter style Moritz Negra (black beer). Oh and it had a perfectly fine food menu too.

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Music of the stairs

One of my reasons for choosing to come to Barcelona this year was to visit Gaudi’s famous Casa Battlo. I became friends during the year with a young composer Dani Howard who had composed the tracks for the guided audio tour of the house and I was keen to see inside the amazing building and hear how Dani had responded to her brief. The hotel has a breakfast buffet but I went in quest of something simpler. Opposite Casa Battlo was a Santander Bank work cafe which I thought I’d try. Result too, as Santander account holders get a 30% discount, so it was a very cheap juice, coffee and croissant. Loads of other industrious people were poring over laptops, negotiating on the phone and working hard. Interesting idea.

The Santander Work/Cafe andCasa Battlo exterior

The first part of the tour is in the basement in a Yayoi Kusama style mirror room. You step onto a moving metal platform and make a large circle through projections of the architect himself slumped exhausted among his drawings and the objects from nature that inspired his designs – fish, shells, mushrooms, rock formations. This is accompanied by a very watery track, whooshing waves mixed with orchestral sounds and set a theme for the tour which likens Gaudi’s structure to a section through an inverted ocean – I didn’t write the script!

The tour proper is guided by a tablet with sixteen icons to select when you enter a room with that sign and commentary and music play. I absolutely love the building – the innovative elements, gorgeous woodwork, wrought iron balustrades and typical Gaudi trencadis – the patterned facades we usually call mosaics which combine broken tiles, glass and other materials making Gaudi the great recycler. I’ve added a few images from the house but it’s very tactile as well – you need to be there.

The atrium , wonderful early phone, lovely eccentric door and internal watery stained glass.

The house is tall and has this fabulous double atrium from floor to skylight flooding it with light – a very clever touch. So the the tour heads inexorably upwards until you reach the roof with great views over the city. As you mount each flight and select the next images so Dani’s music changes to fit the atmosphere and function of the room you’re in. It is wonderfully varied – simple piano pieces at times, what sounds like a marimba and cello rippling away for another but generally fully orchestral and often choral themes that work extremely well. The huge uplifting crescendo for the top of the stairs gave even my weary legs a jolt of energy. I think there’s a Battlo Suite for concert performance in there – rights permitting of course. The great thing is that the orchestra at the recording was under the baton of Pablo Urbina, now Dani’s husband.

Water supply on the roof and *trencadis* flower pots on the patio

After a few moments contemplation on the roof marvelling that the large structures were in fact the house’s water supply we descend through another work of art. What was once the fire escape has been transformed by the Japanese sculptor Kendo Kuma who has draped the walls in swirls of aluminium links of chain mail which are aesthetically pleasing and highly tactile.

You exit through an immersive screen cube with projections of Gaudi icons and responses by artist Refik Anadol. The website suggests an hour and fifteen minutes – I went in at 11:00 and out at 13:30. House and music in utter harmony and I even made it up and back downstairs. I’d heard of the nearby Cerveseria Catalana and thought that would be a good option for lunch. Hah! Why I’d heard of it is that everybody else had, so I waited a little less than the threatened twenty minutes – it sometimes helps being just one – and enjoyed the amazing atmosphere and some great carved ham with a beer and then a glass of Verdejo with some anchovies and padron peppers a combination I’d not had before.

Spain September 2018

Manzanares – exploring the ologies

This is one of the paradors I haven’t stayed at before and on arrival I know why. It’s address is Km 175 A4 and it really is right beside the very noisy motorway from Madrid to Cordoba and beyond. The double glazing’s good behind the typical galleried facade so in the rooms it’s fine but by the excellent pool there’s a hum of traffic all the time.

However this wasn’t going to be a stay in the hotel all day stay so no real problem. On arrival after my Don Quixote day I walked the twenty minutes into the centre. To be fair it’s a fairly dull town with a few good buildings – theatre very deco, church one very modern and some very ancient as well as a good plaza.

However this part of the trip was for swimming (tick), writing (tick) chilling (semi-tick) and exploring the local ecology, archeology and oenology (two and a half ticks).

Not far away are the Tablas de Daimiel a national park wetlands area on the Guadiana River. It had a good visitor centre with lots of dioramas of flora and fauna at different times of the year and some well maintained footpaths and being around lagoons and marshes not too much up except to an observatory from which I was able to spot very little. Coots and heron don’t really count but there were some small birds whizzing about that I could’n’t identify. A very pleasant circular walk of three kilometres in the morning before it got too hot.

My next stop was the provincial capital Ciudad Real again new to me. It had a couple of really nice squares, some deco buildings, or as they call it here modernisme, and felt quite buzzy. There were some great posting boxes too. It provided a good lunch stop in the shade as the temperature reached 41 Celsius.

Friday’s outing was to the Motilla del Azuer a Bronze Age settlement with the Iberian peninsula’s deepest well or so I’d read in Wikipedia or Tripadvisor. It seemed quite close by. Once again I decide to make my archaeology trip in the morning before it hots up. The SatNav directed me after 5 km onto a dirt road. Now I’m quite familiar with the fact that in large parts of the country roads don’t have tarmac but are perfectly serviceable. This was not really the best I’ve come across and when I found myself behind two ghost tractors it was second gear for ages and then a complete stop to snap a group of melon pickers. I couldn’t help thinking about our picking problems in agriculture back home as this gang of Moroccans – I did ask if they’d mind – made a pick, pass and stack line onto a trailer.

On then to the Motilla to find it closed and with a notice saying you could only visit by appointment in guided tours – if only I’d checked their website first. There are some good photos, one of which I’ve borrowed, but I had to make do with this one as the next available tour is on 15 September when I’ll be at Vicarage Road for Watford v Manchester United – full of confidence. So a half tick for that one but a fun, slightly scary journey into the vast interior. The Motilla is exactly in the middle of nowhere, an accord I’d erroneously bestowed on Tembleque which is much closer to somewhere.

I am familiar with the product of Valdepenas – most excellent wines and as luck would have it I chose to visit the city during the Fiesta del Vendemmia y Vino (harvest and wine). Oenology – tick. The main square was heaving with extra cafe counters, a band was doing its sound check and a red London bus was an attractive tapas outlet. The great thing was that the atmosphere was suffused with the aroma of grilled sardines and as I ordered a beer I was presented with a whole sardine and a piece of bread as my freebie. So lunch consisted of a stroll round the square: pork skewers at one, chicken wings, tortilla and that’s enough beer as I have to drive. But before all that I’d been to the Cultural Centre that had a fine art and sculpture exhibition. Another spectacle that caught my attention was the excellent stencilled iron street names and the umbrellas that hung over the main shopping streets. These are a unique feature of the city – 4000 of them are strung up in early summer to alleviate the heat, provide shade for shoppers and act as a tourist attraction. I loved them with their Spanish flag reds and yellows and colours of provincial and local emblems. My final visit had to be to the big statue of the Don at the end of the main street. It’s a large bronze and there was its maquette in the exhibition I went to earlier.

I came back to Manzanares via La Solana which is on the Ruta de Don Quijote and I wondered how he would have coped with these modern contraptions.

The town has a fine plaza and church, a ducal palace now the town hall, a cinema themed bar and is famous for growing saffron without which no paella would be complete.

Spain again

Vichy Catalan

The first four months of this year have been rather busy so after fulfilling Dee’s last wishes on her birthday by letting her fly free from the Ivinghoe Beacon, I thought it was time for me to fly away too for a while and catch up with me and my thoughts. Friends and family have been wonderfully supportive and made sure I didn’t sit doing a bottle of scotch every night or something equally daft and making sure that I had plenty of stimulating company, excursions and diversions. So I decided to take off for three weeks in May and where better to go than Spain which has meant so much to us both over the last twenty plus years. So here we go on a visit on my own to some of the places we had enjoyed together and see how it all stacks up.

Well the planning is all rubbish for a start:

DataCars persuade me to leave home at 10:30 for a 14:45 flight despite my assertion that 11:30 would be good, So an early last water of the plants that kind people will keep alive while I’m away and off we go. Not even the slightest pause at the Blackwall Tunnel so we get to Stansted at 11:20 and I’m checked in and through security in double quick time with two hours before they even announce the gate! One of the perks Dee had on her bank account was an airport lounge pass which we had made good use of in the past. I decided to continue the pass from a Groupon half price deal. Was I glad of it today! In a quiet room with a view of aircraft if that’s your thing I had coffee and croissants, read the paper and started to write this. Then it was time for lunch and a glass of wine and then off to the gate feeling calm and relaxed not having had to spend my time being screamed at to buy duty free goods – to get to the lounge and the gates Stansted has copied IKEA so you have to walk past all those designer outlets, and Boots and Smiths, before you can reach your destination.
The best car hire deal was direct with Budget who claimed their office was on Girona airport. It’s not. And they close at 18:00. My flight arrived at 17:45, slightly early, but after baggage reclaim, determining the location of Budget and walking the half a k to get there, the office was closed. However the lady in charge had not quite escaped so a young lady with a bicycle in a big black case and I were allowed to collect our pre-booked cars BUT we had to pay €60 extra for “out of hours’ collection” which the boss lady was most apologetic about and gave us detailed receipts and instructions on how to reclaim it. It’s clearly a scam she doesn’t approve of. She also “upgraded” me to a smart red Audi which is quite nippy and fun to drive.
My first hotel Balneari Vichy Catalan was carefully selected just 20 minutes from Girona Airport and at the source of what had always been our favourite mineral water Vichy Catalan. You can really taste those minerals doing you good – just don’t put it in whisky.

I don’t know how good your Catalan is but this banner mocking my arrival says Festival the last Saturday in April. When do I arrive? The first of May. It also features the person who gives the place its name. Mala vella is an evil old woman who reportedly haunted the castle in medieval times. I checked in to the hotel and set off to find a bar with a UK TV feed so I could watch Watford v Liverpool. Everywhere was closed in fiesta recuperation mode so I came back to the hotel to find that there was a Spanish channel showing it so I could watch us just miss out on at least a point thanks to a wonder goal from Emre Can, a great save from a Capoue shot and the crossbar from Prödl. The Spanish commentators found Vicarage Road very difficult to pronounce. This led to me being by a long way the last person in the restaurant – a time honoured Lesley-Raggett tradition so I excused myself by indicating my watch still being on London time. As with the majority of Spanish staff they were gracious, attentive and had a laugh about it. They didn’t mention Brexit. I did leave a tip. An interesting fact – well I thought so – is that the Balneari Hotel and the Vichy Catalan company were established in 1881 the same year as a certain football club!

So day 1 is nearing its end and my poor planning has been rescued by the fact that the hotel is a spectacular example of modernisme architecture, the town has a lot of fine houses in similar vein and I’m doing a hydrotherapy circuit tomorrow morning just like we did together with such delight in San Sebastian last August. A comparative report will follow.

Boston + July 2014, Retro-blogs

Calm, Columbus and Cadiz

With final programme and DVD masters delivered to the client in every conceivable version and the final invoice sent on 28 September we were finally free to go for a real rest. This really was going to be a restorative break with minimal travel – nine days in the parador at Mazagon and five at the one in Cadiz. We flew to Faro and got an airport shuttle bus to take us into Huelva to pick up a hire car so as to avoid the horrendous extras they charge for crossing borders in a rental car. Mistake! The bus dropped people off at lots of villa and resort locations on the way to the border so it took for ever. And who had forgotten that Portugal chooses to be in a different time zone than Spain? So by the time we reach Huelva it’s past one-thirty and the Avis office is now closed till four. So with me wrangling three pieces of luggage and Dee only managing one because of needing her stick we found literally the nearest bar-restaurant and had a lengthy lunch. Avis did sympathise and upgraded us to a large automatic Skoda which drove very well. It’s only half an hour to Mazagon so we arrived in good time to suss out the parador and enjoy our suite. P1010327 P1010331 We had decided to go for a suite as we were there for such an unusually long stay and it was a decision well made – it was huge with a living room, bedroom, massive bathroom and a balcony.

There were outdoor and indoor pools and although not one of the paradors in a historic building it was extremely pleasant with a good restaurant and a pleasant and relaxing bar.

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20151004_114402 — Guess which is the 100 year old.

End of blog really, as we just sat around reading, planned a new layout for the garden back home, ate and slept. Right? Nah. Well right next to the parador entrance was a huge pine tree, more than a hundred years old which has been declared a national historic monument. So we had to walk out and view that.

Then there was a half day excursion into the Donaña National Park that we couldn’t miss and feet became itchy for a modicum of sightseeing but we did also manage some calm days at the hotel as well. The Donaña trip involved setting off in the dark to arrive at the departure point by eight a.m. But we arrived and got into a long wheelbase truck that took us on a brilliant trip throughout the varied areas of the park. We drove down the sea shore where we saw turtles, into the marshy bits with loads of flamingos and other birds and then into the forests where there were wild boar, deer and wild horses. Then the return trip was through the dunes. Four exhilarating hours of great interest and fun.

One of our friends had spent a year in southern Spain a while back and had told us about taking part in the pilgrimage to El Rocio so as we were only a short drive away we thought we’d go there for lunch and to see what it was all about. The town is like something out of a western with unpaved roads and yellow dust everywhere. Then there are the hermandades or fraternities where the different groups of pilgrims place their statues of the Virgin de El Rocio until it is time to visit her shrine. There’s street after street of white and yellow buildings with homes, bars and hermandades all intermingled and in true movie style there are hitching rails for your horse. We had lunch there and then drove back via the scenic route to Mazagon – a great day out.

P1010438 On another day we also decided to make a further excursion to La Rabida where Columbus set sail for the Indies and found America. There’s a dock on the banks of the Rio Tinto where full size replicas of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María can be visited. They are frighteningly small for voyages of that duration and P1010435 danger. There’s an excellent dockside exhibition of what life was like in Columbus’ time and a great idea of how the galley was the most important part of the vessel.

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P1010482 Just back inland is the monastery in which Columbus signed his papers confirming that Ferdinand and Isabella had come up with the cash for his voyage. It’s all set in a park with specimen plants and massive palms and a very pleasant few hours were whiled away including a stop for lunch which made somebody very happy.

Columbus was also associated with nearby Palos de la Frontera and Moguer which we saved for another day and proved well worth the visit. On the way we saw massive fields growing strawberries and discovered that this is Spain’s principal area for their cultivation. We also learned that there’s controversy because vast quantities of water are being extracted from the Donaña national park’s scant reserves to the extent that if action is not taken to stop the park may lose its UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

In Moguer we were able to see close up one of the carriages and virgin statues for El Rocio as well as cowboys roaming the streets on horseback. There was a splendidly tiled theatre that was now used as a cultural centre where there was an exhibition of local artworks that proved leaveable-behind.

Having chilled for nine days in our splendid suite and had some of the rest we both needed we then set off for Cadiz a city we’d stayed in before – also in October – in 2003. Another surprise en route was field after field of cotton – just as with strawberries in Huelva, there’s an awful lot of cotton in Cadiz. We again stayed at the Cadiz parador but since we were last there it’s been demolished and rebuilt completely in a very modern style which works well. We had a room overlooking the luxuriant Parque Genovés and spent a lot of time on the fabulous pool deck.

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We did do the open top bus tour to get a feel for the whole city – a spectacular cathedral, a lofty watch tower, Santa Catalina castle right next to the hotel, long sandy beaches and a massive cruise ship terminal complete with three floating apartment blocks on a European tour.

Cadiz is a wonderfully compact city best explored on foot. There’s a great market, galleries, bars and restaurants galore and a fabulous amount of modernisme architecture and details on its buildings. We particularly liked some of the tiled advertisements. Cadiz is a real feast for the eyes and the belly. We were amused by the resilience of al fresco diners during a shower – umbrellas raised they carried on regardless.

We had to drive back to Malaga to fly home and foolishly kept the car but it didn’t leave the parador garage during our five days there at €12 a night. Big mistake, that’s another meal! I also had – there’s an end of holiday theme here – a lengthy Skype call with a publisher from the Netherlands to see if I was the right person to edit and native language check a secondary school English course they were revising and reissuing. It transpired that I am and have worked on it on and off for the whole of 2016 and into 2017.

Well we had actually done pretty much what we promised ourselves in combining periods of rest with a little light sightseeing. And we were treated to some absolutely fabulous sunsets.

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The drive back along the coast was fun too viewing Gibraltar from a great height and then driving all along the Estepona, Marbella, Fuengirola, Torremolinos strip towards Malaga airport and home.