Beach days

After a hell of a lot of driving, I've decided to take a few days off to do very little indeed. I've reached the Costa Brava, and I find the idea of sitting and roasting on the beach really quite appealing. So - blog time off, and camera locked away, sun oil out!

Tarragona

Tarragona shares an unpleasant habit with a lot of the rest of Europe : parking for motorhomes is forbidden anywhere near where you want to be, and as a result you spend forever circling around in ever increasing circles trying to find somewhere to park.

That said, its a pleasant town with a long  Roman history : the Roman ruins of Tarraco have been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Part of the bases of large Cyclopean walls near the Cuartel de Pilatos are thought to pre-date the Romans. The aforesaid building, a prison in the 19th century, is said to have been the palace of Augustus. The 2nd century amphitheatre, near the sea-shore, was extensively used as a quarry after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and but few vestiges of it now remain.

The modern and the old rub shoulders all over the place, with major renovations and rebuilding being done to the cathedral - bizarrely they have chosen to do it in concrete grey, which is completely out of kilter with the older sandy colored stone.

Street graffitti is also very prevalent - mostly done to enhance rather than the usual scrawl of illegible monikers. This cat, perched in a bricked up window appealed to my sense of humour...

As befits a major town near Valencia, the streets are lined with orange trees, with some interesting results where the local youths have got bored and whiled away the afternoon lobbing oranges at anti-pigeon spikes on old buildings. The new are still bright and orange, whilst surrounded by a veritable pot-pourri of old dried oranges!

Tarragona is worth a visit - a Ryan Air or Easyjet weekend - but to be honest, not much more than that!

Coastal run....or is that Castle run?

From Andalucia, I went back up the Mediterranean coast - cutting across country to Lorca and on to Murcia. My initial night stop was at Velez-Blanco ( not to be mixed up with Velez-Rojo) where I tried to find the local campsite. I've had a few interesting experiences in Spain with campsites - the Barcelona campsite which should be condemned, coz if it could be fucked up, it was; the mid country campsite which had closed down.......and sure enough this was another. Arriving fairly late - the Spanish dont stop play till gone midnight, I finally found the junction off down a steep hillside outside the village. It appeared to be in the middle of a nature reserve/park with very few buildings.....and those with doors creaking gently in the breeze and no signs of life. When I realised the camping sign led down a 1 in 4 dirt track downhill, in the dark, I decided that perhaps the lovely moon, and the fact that I had Creedence Clearwater Revival playing Bad Moon Rising was a subtle hint, and that this was not somewhere I wanted to stop!

Lorca - where I eventually overnighted  - is a lovely town with a huge castle on the hill above. It also has a very bemused Peugeot garage, where I turned up, a little concerned that the squeaking of my brakes might mean that I had worn out the brake pads. After some shuffling of vehicles to get the 'van into the garage, the chaps gathered around with torches and had a little discussion whilst looking closely at my wheels. The leader then decided it was probably best to do a test drive.....and after getting in the vehicle the wrong side at first, headed off down the road and tried his best emergency brake manoeuvre. He rapidly decided this was a *bad* idea as the contents of the cupboards came hurtling towards him, but also decided he knew what the issue was! Apparently, when it's hot and sticky the 'dust' from the pads collects up, and eventually creates an unpleasant squeal - something I'd not noticed in the rest of Europe, as it had rained pretty much everywhere else, and washed said dust away. Still, a few squirts of WD40 or some such equivalent and I was on my way to Murcia  - arriving just in time for a divine tapas lunch (with the most awesome mushroom and asparagus scramble dish) in a small bar.

More trucking up the coast .....Valencia and north. There are hundreds of castles in this area of Spain, and I couldnt stop at even a 10th of them - and since, after a while, pictures of castle walls all start to blend into one, I'll spare you the pain. I highly recommend it as a holiday trip though!

Cave living

Troglodyte homes are found all over the world, but seem to be especially popular in Andalucia : it's a sensible solution to the heat problem, as the caves  hold relatively stable comfortably cool temperature without substantial investment in airconditioning. Whilst cave dwellings slipped out of popularity for a while, the current economic climate seems to be making them increasingly popular due to the reduced cost of running a home - and of course, a good ecological solution too! 

I found this little village just outside Guadix  at the end of a very dodgy little road, and was mobbed by small grubby children as soon as I appeared. They seemed quite fascinated by the van, but rapidly changed focus to the idea of being able to earn some pocketmoney ( their idea, not mine!) by acting as tour guide. Some of the children live in the village, the young lad who was my chief guide was visiting from Burgos and staying in his grandparents cave. 

 Whilst there are a couple of abandonned caves, which are open for tourists to wander in, the majority of the buildings were carefully whitewashed and occupied, with nice shiny cars parked outside. I got some bemused stares from some of the older generation sat in the town square - I'm not sure if it was because of being a female driving a small truck, or the Pied Piper effect I was having on the kids. Still, it was a fascinating visit, and well worth the large packet of crisps and 2€ in small change for the low down on how cave houses really work!

one of

Olives and Arabs - Granada

Granada is definitely olive oil country - and the journey there leaves you in no doubt that it is the primary crop for farmers in that part of the world.  By the time I managed to rock up there, having nursed my poor van over the Sierra Nevada, Spain's highest mountain range, it was gone 7.30 at night, and the ambient temperature being shown at the petrol station was 42 degrees. I have to admit, this was one day when I chose to quiche. A hotel with airconditioning, and a shower seemed like a very sensible idea, since the next day was dedicated to the Alhambra, and I wanted the best possible run at it given the heat!

I can't do the Alhambra justice in describing it in this blog - it takes an entire book to touch on it's complexities. For now, I'm going to crib wiki and content myself with sharing far too many photographs.

Wiki : "

Alhambra ( /ælˈhæmbrə/; Spanish: [aˈlambɾa]; Arabic: الْحَمْرَاء‎, trans. al-Ḥamrāʼ ; literally "the red one", feminine; in colloquial Arabic: el-Ḥamra ), the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra (الْقَلْعَةُ ٱلْحَمْرَاءُ, trans. al-Qalʻat al-Ḥamrāʼ , "the red fortress"), is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It was constructed during the mid 14th century by the Arab rulers of the Emirate of Granada in al-Andalus, occupying the top of the hill of the Assabica on the southeastern border of the city of Granada.

The Alhambra's Moorish palaces were built for the last Muslim Emirs in Spain and its court, of the Nasrid dynasty. After the Reconquista (reconquest) by the Reyes Católicos ("Catholic Monarchs") in 1492, some portions were used by the Christian rulers. The Palace of Charles V, built by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527, was inserted in the Alhambra within the Nasrid fortifications."