Castile - Day 8, a Mountain Top Journey

After we had walked through the gardens we left the Palace and then the town and we drove south again towards our next intended destination, the fortress town of Manzanares El Real where we planned to see our final castle. To get there we had to drive across the top of the mountain and shortly after leaving San Ildefonso we began to steadily climb the northern face of the peaks. At first the road was quite straight but then it began to twist and turn in a series of hairpin bends and at one thousand six hundred metres we crossed the snow line and the sides of the roads were piled high with snowplough clearances. The road continued to climb to one thousand eight hundred metres and there were stunning views at every turn.

Eventually we reached the top at a ski resort and mountain pass called Puerto de Navacerrada, the gateway to the long descent on the southern side down towards Madrid. We were right on schedule to complete our planned itinerary but at the top was a Guardia Civil patrol car and two policemen dressed in olive green who pulled us to a stop and then explained that the road was closed and that we would have to take a detour back down the northern side of the mountain. At least we assumed that was what they were saying because they didn’t understand a single word of English and I didn’t understand Spanish police instructions terribly well. I said “Madrid, Madrid” on the basis if you say it twice they might understand and it seemed to work because he pointed again to the alternative road that we would have to take.

We pulled over and examined the map and we knew that this was going to be a problem because this was going to add thirty kilometres to the journey and there certainly wasn’t enough fuel in the tank for that. We were at the top of the world and it looked a long way to the nearest town. Luckily it was all down hill from here so I used the throttle as little as possible and freewheeled down the safe sections. I knew that there was about thirty kilometres left in the tank but as we went down the steep bits the needle on the fuel gauge rushed headlong into the red and even though I knew this was because of uneven fuel distribution in the tank the situation certainly brought me out in a sweat and I didn’t enjoy this part of the drive as much as I should have done.

We passed through a few small villages but there was no sign of a garage and I began to wonder how I long it would take for someone to bring a petrol can to us from Madrid and how much it would cost but then we reached the pretty town of Rascafria sitting in a narrow valley surrounded by mountain peaks and after stopping and asking for directions we thankfully found a filling station and I put an extra couple of litres in more than we needed just to be on the safe side. We had a drinks break in the town sitting in the sunshine at a pavement café and then resumed our journey. There was a safe route using the main A1 Madrid to Burgos road but feeling confident once more we choose to try the mountain passes again this time using the eastern route and we hoped that this wouldn’t be blocked and closed as well.

We climbed again, quite quickly this time and once we had reached two thousand metres we reached a mountain top plateau surrounded by snowy peaks and with uninterrupted view into the distance. The vegetation of the mountains is predominantly pine forests and copses of oak and holm oak in its lower slopes but here at the summit we drove through picturesque shrub-filled pastures. The mountains abound with a variety of life such as deer, roe and fallow deer, wild boar, badger, various types of weasel, the European wild cat, foxes and hares. There are also a great variety of waterfowl species in the mountain lakes and reservoirs, as well as magnificent birds of prey such as the Eastern Imperial Eagle and the Eurasian Black Vulture. We were only thirty kilometres from Madrid but we were practically alone in a lonely natural wilderness.

We crossed the top and there were no Guardia Civil to send us back and after we passed through the town of Miraflores de la Sierra the road dropped quickly down to the shoreline of a shimmering blue reservoir and very soon we had reached the outskirts of Madrid and joined the motorway system that took us effortlessly back to the airport and the car rental return base where I was disappointed to leave the car with the fuel gauge needle still hovering above the red zone.

This had been an amazing week, we had driven nearly a thousand kilometres and in our circumnavigation of Madrid had seen some wonderful places, come across unexpected surprises, eaten good food and enjoyed the hospitality of the Castilian people every where that we went. Spain might appear from the tourist brochures to be no more than a clichéd whirl of flamenco, bullfights and overcrowded beaches but we are now beginning to fully appreciate the incredible variety and diversity that this huge country has to offer. It was disappointing to be catching a plane to come back home but there is always the return to see Madrid to look forward to later in the year.

Castile - Day 8, A Royal Palace

After breakfast we were reunited with the little Chevrolet Matiz that we hadn’t used for two days and we set off on our planned route back to Madrid. We could have used the new motorway link that tunnels through the mountains but our plan was to use the mountain roads and go over the top. This was going to be approximately seventy kilometres and I calculated that there was exactly the right amount of fuel left in the tank to get it back to the airport on empty. We left the town and headed south towards our first destination of San Ildefonso o La Granja about ten kilometres away in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama and the location of a fabulous Royal Palace.

After driving through Nuevo Segovia we soon arrived in the town where there were a lot of road works and building activity, which made it difficult to find where we were going but we parked the car just outside of the town and walked through the gates into the Baroque streets and walked in what we supposed to be the direction of the Palace. Kim wasn’t feeling so well this morning and she had a stiff neck from watching the Storks so we found a little café and as the streets were still quite cool sat inside and had a coffee and a slice of tortilla (actually I had a beer!).

The town was quiet and there weren’t many visitors and we walked to the Palace through the front garden and to the pay desk where admission was free on Wednesday’s if you could demonstrate European Union citizenship so we flashed our passports and avoided what was actually a very reasonable €4 admission charge. The Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso is a palace set in extensive gardens in the French style of Versailles that was built for Philip V in the early eighteenth century and remains an official residence of the King of Spain. The Spanish Royal family used to like to leave Madrid in the baking hot summer months and take up residence in the mountains where the climate is cooler and more agreeable and looking around the place it was easy to see why.

Inside the dark rooms it was quite cool and an attendant in woollies and a topcoat looked at me in my shirt sleeves as though I had escaped from an institution and gave a surrogate shiver as we examined the exhibition of Flemish tapestries before moving through a succession of state rooms all of which had magnificent views of the adjacent gardens. Best of all was the Royal bedroom with a perfect balcony vista overlooking the fountains in the garden. I didn’t get a sense that King Juan Carlos actually uses this room any more and he probably has an apartment somewhere hidden away, which has a twenty-first century specification with wireless Internet access and Sky TV that this one certainly didn’t have. It was nice inside the Palace but when the sun is shining I prefer to be outside so I suppose I rushed us through the rooms a bit hastily and after finishing in the predictable shop selling lots of Royal souvenirs that we didn’t want we emerged into the gardens and the very pleasant sunshine.

From the Palace we walked through the King’s back garden along the row of fountains all of which represent themes from classical mythology, including Greek deities, allegories and scenes from ancient myths. They are cast in lead to prevent corrosion, and painted over to simulate the nobler material of bronze, or lacquered over white oxydised lead to imitate marble. Amazingly the original waterworks and piping are still functional: they rely purely on gravity to project water up to the forty-meter height of the fountain jet of Perseus and Andromeda because an artificial lake, El Mar, lies secluded at the highest point of the park, and provides a reservoir and water pressure for the whole system. Today, only a few fountains are active each day and only during the real tourist season but twice a year, on the feast days of San Fernando and San Luis all twenty-six fountains are set to work, providing what must be a truely memorable aquatic show.

Castile - Day 7, an unexpected day in Segovia

From the Alcázar gardens the road followed the old city wall along its northern side where there were good views over the river valley below and a barren plain stretching away in infinity towards mountains in the north. The city walls were not so impressive as those in Ávila however and eventually we left the old city through the Puerta de San Cebrián and followed a small road past the Santa Cruz monastery and the City’s bullring to the nearby village of San Lorenzo. Here there was a splendid church in a main square lined on every side with medieval houses and little shops. I imagine that this pretty little place becomes quite congested in the summer but today it was unhurried and charming and the local people paid no attention to us as they went about their business.

The route back to Segovia from the village was through a modern residential development that entered the City at the Plaza de la Artilleria, the bus station underneath the Aqueduct and from where we roamed leisurely through the streets past Romanesque churches and Renaissance palace residencies and older medieval buildings and eventually back to the Plaza Major where it was by now time for a beer and a tapas.

According to legend, the tapas tradition began when the King of Castille Alfonso the Wise visited a tavern in the town of Ventorillo del Chato in the province of Cádiz, and ordered a glass of sherry. There was a gusty wind, so the innkeeper served him his glass of sherry covered by a slice of ham to prevent the sherry from getting dirty. The King liked it, and when he asked for a second glass, he requested another tapa or ‘cover’ just like the first. This evolved into the practice of using slices of bread or meat as a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the drink. The meat used to cover the sherry was normally ham or chorizo, which are both very salty and activate thirst and because of this, bartenders and restaurant owners began creating a variety of snacks to serve with sherry, thus increasing their alcohol sales.

We sat in the gloriously sunny Plaza and watched the residents of Segovia as they met and socialised in the square, sitting on the chairs under what would soon be shady trees and just chatting away and enjoying each others company. A group of old ladies walked several times around the central bandstand and groups of children on school visits began to arrive and congregate noisily as they waited expectantly for their walking tour of the city to begin.

Second drinks arrived with a second plate of tapas and we watched the children leave the square towards the fortress and having established which way they were going we finished our drink and walked in an alternative direction. Kim was fascinated by the old door in the narrow side street running off the Plaza so we returned there for more arty photographs and then simply wasted the afternoon away as we walked through some familiar streets and then some different ones and then some familiar ones again as we continuously interrogated the map for places to visit and things to do that we hadn’t done already.

When we were through we returned again to the bar in the sunny part of the Plaza and reflected on the day. It had been disappointing not to make the journey to Madrid because that was on the top of this weeks to do list but on reflection we had had a second good day in Segovia and the guidebook did seem to suggest that Madrid in a day was being a little bit optimistic so we agreed with the plan to return later in the year and we began to make outline plans for the trip because the search for real Spain will obviously have to include the capital city.

After we had rested and packed in anticipation of an early departure in the morning we waited until it went dark and then went to take some evening pictures of the Cathedral and then a day that had started with a disaster ended with one as well when the bargain €10 camera memory card that Kim had bought twenty-four hours earlier suddenly refused to work and simply displayed a card error message that meant that a whole days pictures of tiled walls and medieval door furniture had disappeared into a photographic black hole. This seemed to affect the full memory card as well and the camera refused to work at all that made us fear for the rest of the photographs from the previous six days.

I began to worry that the camera was jinxed following the battery disaster in Portugal, which meant no photographs there and now this. We still had mine of course but nothing is quite the same as having your own picture memories for posterity. It was a good job it wasn’t mine because I would have been inconsolable and even though this put a dampener on the final evening Kim was able to overcome her disappointment and we had a second good meal at the same restaurant as the previous evening before we returned and finished the packing ready for tomorrow.

Castile - Day 7, Madrid (almost)

So far this week everything had gone mostly to plan and the itinerary that I planned meticulously had worked well so something just had to go wrong and today it went spectacularly awry. On the final full day of the holiday it was our intention to take the train to the capital, Madrid, so we set out alarm clock for a six o’ clock for an early morning start.

It was quite cool as we walked to the bus station next to the Aqueduct and caught the no. 11 bus that would take us to the railway station five kilometres out of town in time to catch the seven-twenty train that would whisk us to the city in thirty-five minutes in time for a traditional Madrileño breakfast. There was an alternative train on the old line but that journey takes two hours through the mountain so the high-speed bullet train Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE seemed a much better option. Since the 1990s Spain has engaged in a frenzy of high-speed rail building and is fast catching up with France and Japan, the world leaders, and by 2010 will have the most extensive high-speed rail network in the world as the Government stitches its disparate regions together with a €100 billion system of bullet trains designed to traverse the countryside at up three hundred kilometres an hour.

There were ten minutes to spare and only one person in front of us at the ticket desk so we didn’t wait long to step up and request two return tickets. The clerk looked at the computer screen and made twitching expressions and tutting noises and I began to fear the worst. After a minute or so he explained that there were no seats on the train and the next one wasn’t for two hours. Oh Bugger! This was something that I hadn’t made allowances for in the plan. I naturally assumed that train travel would be the same as in the United Kingdom where you turn up at Peterborough station, they sell you a ticket whether there is a seat or not (usually not) and you travel to London standing in the corridor next to the loos. Sadly this isn’t an option on the AVE bullet train so we could do no other than to go back to Segovia on the same bus that had just brought us here. The driver seemed a bit surprised because I suspect not many people do a round trip to the railway station at seven o’clock in the morning.

After a moment or two of indecision we considered the options. I didn’t really want to drive to Madrid so we decided to try the alternative two-hour train journey. Because we expected to be in Madrid I hadn’t brought the map of Segovia with me and because the conversation didn’t include ordering beer or wine our attempts at trying to discuss directions with the Segovians proved hopeless so I had to return to the hotel to get the map. It turned out to be about a kilometre and a half away and quite straightforward and we walked there in about half an hour. We needn’t have bothered however because the next train wasn’t until eleven o’clock and we wouldn’t reach Madrid until the afternoon so three hours after the early alarm call we abandoned the Madrid plan and went back to the hotel for breakfast and on the way back we had a brilliant idea – we could come back again later in the year to see Madrid. Every cloud has a silver lining!

So we had a second unexpected day in Segovia and as we had done all of the main things to do yesterday we wondered just what we would do - so we did the same things again today but a little bit more slowly.

First we walked again to the Alcázar and just took our time and enjoyed the views of the city and the mighty Cathedral and the mountains in the background with their peaks still covered in snow. It was a beautiful morning once more and we sat and watched the Storks going about their business again with their unhurried routine of flying from the nest with their big scoopy wings seemingly struggling to get into the sky, massive against the blue sky with a dagger like head tucked into the shoulders and long dangly legs dragging behind almost as an after thought.

The population of storks in Spain is rising, from six thousand seven hundred pairs thirty years ago to an estimated thirty-five thousand pairs today. In fact there are now so many White Storks in Spain that it is now second only to Poland who with fifty thousand birds has traditionally been the country with the most Storks in Europe. This increase in numbers has been so dramatic that the conservation status has been changed from amber to green.

Castile - Day 6, the Aqueduct of Segovia

If the Alcázar isn’t enough the Aqueduct is the most recognised and famous historical symbol of Segovia. It is the largest Roman structure still standing in Spain and was built at the end of first to early second century AD by the Romans during their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula to bring water from the Río Frío about eighteen kilometres away and requiring an elevated section in its final kilometer from the Sierra de Guadarrama to the walls of the old town. This elevated section is supported by an engineering achievement of one hundred and sixty-six arches and one hundred and twenty pillars constructed on two levels. It is twenty eight metres high and constructed with over twenty thousand large, rough-hewn granite blocks, which are joined without mortar or clamps and have remained in place for two thousand years.

We liked the Aqueduct and looked all round it from every possible angle, it is one of those structures that make you appreciate just how brilliant the Romans were. The fifteenth century professor at the University of Salamanca, Marineus, made the claim that ‘we should have no doubt that whatever memorable thing we come across in Spain is due to the Romans’ and although that canno longer be true at the time it was probably a fair assessment.

Underneath the Aqueduct in the Plaza of Azoguejo at the tourist information office we checked timetables and made plans for our railway journey to Madrid in the morning and then we retraced our steps back to the Plaza Mayor where in the mid to late afternoon sunshine we sat and had another beer and another plate of tapas at a third different bar.

There was only one more thing to do in Sergovia so after the refreshment break we went to the Cathedral to finish off the day. The building was completed in 1577 and is regarded as the World’s last great Gothic Cathedral. There was an admission charge again, which seems to becoming quite normal, so we paid the €3 and then entered what is quite possibly the coldest cathedral in Spain and probably all of Europe. We were inappropriately dressed for sub-zero temperatures and althougth the cathedral was well worth the admission charge and the visit but it was too cold to enjoy it so we sprinted around the naves and the chapels with rather indecent haste and were glad to come about again into the sunshine with only seconds to go before hypothermia set in.

Later in the warm afternoon sunshine we needed to warm up so we ambled around the pretty little streets, bought some wine from a little shop near to the hotel and then went back to the room to drink it and look out from our balcony over the square at the late afternoon activity. The Sercotel Infanta Isabel was a good hotel in an excellent location and we enjoyed the setting and the ambiance as we drank our bottle of local Spanish wine and thoughts turned to dining arrangements for the evening.

By the time we had finished the wine and showered and changed it had become cloudy for the first time since we arrived in Spain but it was still very warm as we joined the Segovians in their evening promenading and we did some shopping for little Molly at a Spanish designer baby shop and then went again to the Aqueduct to take pictures in the fading light of dusk. Later we ate at the restaurant that Kim had shown a preference for the previous evening but I had overruled and it turned out to be an excellent choice with a very tasty choice of food.

It had been a long day and we had done a lot of walking so as we were planning to go to Madrid in the morning we finished early and went back to the hotel for an early night and to make last minute plans for tomorrow.

Molly crawls

When it comes to crawling Molly has been getting herself into the launch position for a couple of weeks or so and getting ready for the first attempt. She has been seriously practicing and would sit on all fours and rock back and forth a bit but just as everyone thought she would go she would frustratingly abandon the effort at the last moment. But not any more though and now she has mastered the technique of synchronising arms and legs and has discovered forward movement using the hands and knees crawl. The energy that she was using up by kicking and thrashing about has been transferred into motion.

According to the experts most babies will crawl between six and nine months so Molly’s crawl is right on schedule. They can’t do this any earlier because they must learn quite a few physical skills in order to learn to do it. Before they will be able to crawl babies need to be able to hold their heads up on their own, develop arm and leg muscles to keep their body weight up while they are lifting themselves onto their hands and knees as well as understand how to move opposite limbs at the same time.

Now that Molly is mobile there will have to be changes around the house because nothing below a metre high will be safe from her inquisitive investigation. Already she is showing a preference for the Television remote controller over the Night Garden characters and it a set of car keys that makes her crawl the quickest. A fascination for car keys must be a family thing because my brother Richard had an obsession from a very early age and I can remember lots of frantic searches for them around the house usually just before we were going out. I have always assumed that that was why he went on to have a career in motor mechanics and car sales and can score 100% in the Facebook car recognition quiz.

Making the house baby safe is really a matter of common sense so I was surprised to find so many child development web sites giving basic and patronising advice to parents. Surely everyone knows not to leave sharp knives lying on the floor or to make sure dangerous bits of electrical equipment are kept well out of reach? And as for taking health and safety too far what about this that I found on the website http://www.mamasandmunchkins.com/ - ‘Crawling Knee Pads in Strawberry – only $19.99’:

‘Protect your baby! Knee pads from Snazzy Baby - Australia. No more harm from redness, cuts, rashes, or carpet burn. Uniquely designed to protect your baby’s knees while learning to crawl and walk. Non-slip embossed grips enhance traction and allow a comfortable stretch. Your baby will have the ultimate protection from dive suit-quality Neoprene. Just slip on your baby and relax! One size fits all. Adjustable. Soft, durable and machine washable.’

I think this has to go straight to the top of my list of unnecessary and waste of money baby purchases. That’s what knees are for!

As well as crawling the other news is that Molly has learnt to drive:

Castile - Day 6, the Alcázar of Segovia

I had a disturbed nights sleep full of wild dreams because I was still feeling a bit unusual and I hadn’t slept well now since the delightful room in Belmonte but we woke to another beautiful clear morning and a sunny Plaza Major that had been swept and washed in the early hours of the morning. After two cups of tea it was time to go to breakfast and as I selected clothes I realised that I had left my favourite blue linen holiday shirt in the hotel wardrobe in Ávila and as it wasn’t practical to go back for it this was a bad start to the day. But it improved almost immediately with a good breakfast that was served in the hotel bar and had an excellent selection of food including fresh tortilla and an excellent pear flan.

I was feeling much better now and after breakfast we walked out into the sociable main square and followed a street adjacent to the Cathedral and walked in the direction of the Alcázar, which is the most visited castle in Spain. The route took us through narrow streets past craft shops and churches and eventually brought us out at the north of the city on the top of a rocky outcrop that was the location of the fortress that was begun in the twelfth century and was subsequently occupied by a succession of Castilian monarchs from Alfonso X to Phillip II and Charles III. In the nineteenth century it was destroyed by fire but was restored to its present magnificent status soon after.

Segovia and the Spanish tourist board would have us believe that the Alcázar was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland and Disneyworld but there is no real evidence for this. In fact it is more likely that the famous icon of the Disney empire was inspired principally by Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria and several French palaces, most notably Louis XIV’s Versailles although it is also quite possible that the Alcázar in Segovia may also have been an important influence as well.

In front of the castle there were manicured gardens and in each of the tops of the forty metre high pine trees there was a nest and a pair of Storks going about their own business and at the same time entertaining the visitors who were all risking neck and back injuries as everyone strained to get the perfect in flight photograph. As the birds took to the skies and disappointed the amateur photographers they caught the thermals and gained height quickly as they went off in search of food, or perhaps it was to deliver a new born baby?

We purchased tickets to visit the Alcázar and paid a little extra to climb to the top of the Torre de Juan II (total price €6 each). The castle was busy with a coach full of Japanese tourists and several school visits so we had to try and arrange our journey through the rooms and exhibits to try and avoid the busy sections and the crowds. After visiting the state rooms and the armouries we ended our visit with a climb of three hundred and twenty steps up the spiral staircase to the top of the tower where we were rewarded for our efforts with fabulous views over the city and the surrounding countryside.

It had taken most of the morning to visit the Alcázar and after we were finished we walked back to the Plaza Mayor for a drink and a tapas and selected a bar with tables in the sun and sat and enjoyed watching the residents of Segovia as they went about their business of the day in probably the same way that they have for a thousand years. A walk around the square, a sit down, a chat, a walk around the square, a sit down, a chat and so on and so on.

While we sat there I began to think about all the reasons that I like Spain and one is that for someone like me on the shorter side most of the people are what I regard as normal size. According to Eurostat the Spanish are the shortest people in Europe and the average height for a man is five foot seven inches and I feel that that is just about the perfect size and it makes me feel comfortable. Officially Dutch men are the tallest at an average of five foot ten inches and although not included in the Eurostat figures the Croatians claim to be an average six foot one inch. We went there last year and I can confirm that they are indeed big lads.

It was hot now and we were enjoying the sun so when the bar owner pulled down the canopy for shade we moved on back into the side streets to find a photo opportunity of a medieval door that had inspired us from a description in a guide book that we had purchased at the castle. With mission accomplished and pictures in the can we returned to the square and stopped at a different bar for more drink and more tapas and then left and walked in the opposite direction towards the Roman Aqueduct.

Real Ávila Club de Fútbol

Real Ávila Club de Fútbol was originally called Avila Football Club, but when King Alfonso VIII was made the honorary chairman in 1925, the name was changed to its present one. This is a bit like Real Madrid and a team can only get the Real status if there is, or has been, a Royal connection. Football is the national sport of Spain and it is immensely popular. The top clubs play in La Liga and below that the Spanish league is divided into three main divisions, two of which are sub-divided into regional competitions. Like La Liga (division1), division 2a is a national league for the top Spanish clubs with plenty of money. Division 2b is divided into four regional leagues, central, north, east and south, (perhaps they don't play football in the west?) and division 3 consists of local groups that are regionalised to sensibly cut down on travelling and expense. This is important because Spain is a big country and the logistics of transport would make it difficult, not just for traveling fans but for the football clubs themselves, to get to away games in time for kick off.

The third division is divided into eighteen regions corresponding to the autonomous communities of Spain, except for Andalusia which is itself divided into two, east and west, because it is so large and even includes teams from the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.

Until I became interested in Spain I didn’t know that about Ceuta and Melilla but they exist because when Spain recognised the independence of Spanish Morocco in 1956 these two cities and a number of small islands remained under Spanish rule as they were considered integral parts of the Spanish state. The government of Morocco has repeatedly called for Spain to transfer the sovereignty of the two cities drawing comparisons with Spain's own territorial claim to Gibraltar but in both cases of dispute the national governments and the local populations of the territories reject these claims by a large majority. The Spanish position states that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of the Spanish state, and have been since the fifteenth century, whereas Gibraltar, being a British Overseas Territory, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom.

Anyway, back to football. Real Ávila play in group eight of the Tercera División which is based in Castilla y Leon and after the home defeat to Arandina on the 22nd March they had a spectacularly successful end to the season, they didn’t lose another match, winning six and finishing with a 3-3 draw at home with the division champions, Palencia. Arandina also had a good finish and they didn’t lose a match either but with only four victories had to settle for fifth place, one below the play off places. Real Ávila finished in the top four places so go on to the finals looking for a promotion to division 2b. The club last played in this higher division in the 1980-81 season when they were relegated. They are not very good at getting promoted however because they have played in the play off finals in three out of the last four seasons and have always been unsuccessful.

The format of the play off finals is new this year and is really complicated. The eighteen group winners are drawn into a two-legged series and the nine winners are then automatically promoted to the Segunda División B. The nine losing clubs then enter the play off round for the last nine promotion spots. The eighteen runners-up are drawn against one of the seventeen fourth-place clubs outside their own group and the eighteen third-placed clubs are drawn against each other in a two-legged series. The twenty-seven winners then advance with the nine losing clubs from the champions' series to determine the eighteen teams that will enter the last two-legged series for the last nine promotion spots.

After the play offs and when the eighteen promoted sides are sorted out the Spanish Football Authorities then have to sit down and have a think about which of the four regional groupings the promoted clubs will play in based on their geographic location. I bet that takes some working out!

Real Ávila finished in fourth spot in group 8 and therefore have to face a runner-up from one of the other groups. This year they have been drawn against Almeria from Andalusia group 9 and the two legs will be played during the last week in May on the 24th at home and the return fixture away on the 31st.

http://www.realavila.com/

Castile - Day 5, Sierra de Guadarrama

After we had finished our drink it was reluctantly time to leave. We had liked it here in Ávila but it was time to go and drive to our final destination, Segovia, about fifty kilometres away to the east. This involved a drive along the line of the Sierra de Guadarrama, a spectacular mountain chain that rises to nearly two thousand five hundred metres and spans half of the Sistema Central, the central mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula, which runs in a southwest to northeast direction and effectively splits Spain in two. It is located between the Sierra de Gredos in the province of Ávila, and Sierra de Ayllón in the province of Guadalajara so our drive took us all the way along its northern edge as it runs between the two neighbouring Provinces of Ávila and Segovia.

The approach to Segovia was spectacular and still some way out of the city we could see it rising from the plain on a convenient outcrop of rock with a spectacular mountain backdrop and the Cathedral and the Alcázar reaching dramatically into the blue sky. I was determined not to repeat the parking difficulties of Ávila but this plan went spectacularly wrong after I drove through the city gates into the old city and tried to guess a way to the Plaza Mayor where our hotel was waiting for us. We made a couple of circuits stopping here and there to consult an inadequate map and then by chance arrived at the main square but our path was blocked by one of those steel retractable bollards.

Some men in a bar helped me out and directed me to another entrance and this had a bollard in the down position and an intercom to request permission to enter. There was no answer and I was nervous about driving across it in case it raised up without warning, the floor panel of the car would be crushed, the CCTV cameras would catch the moment and I would forever be shown on television repeats of the Spanish equivalent of ‘Beadle’s About’. I could sense that a bus driver behind was getting impatient so I had no choice but to go. I went into the memory banks and remembered driving in Sicily so revved the engine until it screamed, popped the clutch, spun the wheels and dashed across as quickly as I could. Nothing happened – the bollard stayed down of course but at least it livened a few folk up who were dawdling aboutthe square.

We were staying at the Sercotel Infanta Isabel and we had one of the best rooms on the second floor with a perfect view of the Plaza Mayor lined with cafés and bars and with the Cathedral directly opposite. I think I had had too much sun and was feeling a bit unwell so while Kim went for the essential alcohol I had a rest and watched the Sunday night Bullfighting on the television. I have never been to a bullfight but think that I might like to experience it.

There was a full house at the event and the crowd were very excited and animated. There were six events and the fights involved three matadors with their band of attendants, the picador horsemen who lance the bulls and the banderillos who stab them with barbed spikes. The final act of the three-part corrida always involves a series of intricate moves and daredevil passes by the matador before he makes his final lethal thrust between the bull’s shoulder blades. When the spectators approved of the matador’s performance they waved white handkerchiefs to signal to the President of the fight that he should reward him with a trophy, one or both of the bull’s ears and/or its tail. It is not a very fair fight and I couldn’t help rooting for the bulls but each one came to its inevitable conclusion.

As it went dark it was nice to sit and watch the square melting from afternoon to evening with lots of sociable activity. There were lots of Segovians walking out in families and we joined them in the busy streets and looked for somewhere to eat. We walked further than planned and ended up at the Aqueduct, which we were really saving until tomorrow so finding ourselves at the bottom of the town we walked back and by my choice found a little restaurant that turned out to be quite disappointing so after that I had the restaurant selection responsibility removed but as I had failed quite badly tonight I didn’t argue about that at all.

Castile - Day 5, Ávila

The weather was so settled that I practically stopped carrying out the early morning check because it was so reliable and this morning we just went down to breakfast without giving it a second thought. The breakfast room was really special and so was the food. It was laid out on the tables and the choice was overwhelming; hot food, cold food, a selection of bread and fruit juices and local specialities as well. It was necessary to be really disciplined amount portions because it would have been too easy to fill right up with the first visit and not leave room for all the other delicious selections. This was the best hotel breakfast that we have had for a long time and we rued the fact that we had only one night at the Palacio De Los Velada.

After breakfast we had an early walk into the town before checking out of the hotel and we stepped out in shirt sleeves but were immediately forced back to get a jacket because although the sun was shining, at this elevation, there was a sharp nip in the air.

The hotel was next to the cathedral, which was closed to visitors this morning on account of this being Sunday and the local people were using the place for the purpose for which it was intended (worship) so we walked around the outside instead and were delighted to see a dozen or so Storks sitting on huge but untidy twig nests at the very top of the building. They sat perfectly still in pairs just like bookends with only the breeze occasionally ruffling their feathers. Periodically one or the other would fly off in search of food climbing high and magnificently on the morning thermals that were beginning to form. Upon return they greeted each other with a noisy display of bill clattering that resonated through the granite streets and echoed off the sides of the buildings like rapid machine gun fire.

We walked outside of the old city walls and found ourselves in the middle of preparations for a half marathon that was going to take place around the city walls with athletes all warming up and preparing for the big event. In the early morning sun the view over the table top plain to the snow capped mountains in the distance was unexpected and amazing and we sat for a while and enjoyed it. It seemed hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago we were driving across the southern plains with all thoughts of winter behind us and now were in the mountains surrounded by snow.

After we had checked out of the hotel we went back into the city to walk the walls, which are the best preserved in all of Spain and although they have had some recent renovation still capture the spirit of an impregnable medieval granite fortress. It is two and a half kilometres long with two thousand five hundred battlements, eighty-eight cylindrical towers, six main gates and three smaller pedestrian gates. Ávila was used in the 1957 film ‘The Pride and the Passion’ that starred Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra when a group of Spanish nationalists during the war of independence (The Peninsula War) lugged a huge gun up the mountains to attack the city and liberate it from the French invaders. It was based on the book ‘The Gun’, written by C S Forrester.

We paid the €4 fee and received long winded instructions on how to find the four separate entrances to which our tickets entitled us to go and then climbed the steps to the top of the wall. There were excellent views of the town, of the countryside beyond and the Storks sitting on their piles of sticks on top of the Cathedral and other buildings. We thought that Ávila seemed nicer than Toledo and friendlier too because all of the information boards on the wall and in the town were thoughtfully translated into English. There were an awful lot of steps to negotiate on the wall and because not all of the upper walkway was open this involved having to double back a lot as well to get to the exits.

After completing two of the sections we stopped for a drink in the sun in San Vicente Square on the outside of the walls and we agreed that we really liked the practice of always providing a little tapas with the drinks and we hatched a cunning plan – three bars, three drinks, three tapas, free lunch! Just as we were leaving a mini-bus pulled up and a dozen or so men in blue and white football shirts got out. They were making a lot of noise and made straight for the bar. They were here from the nearby town of Aranda de Duero to watch a football match because their team Arandina were playing Real Ávila in the Spanish third division but as kick off wasn’t until five o’clock they were going to be doing a lot of drinking that afternoon.

Rested and refreshed we continued our walk around the walls but it became a bit repetitive and we tired of the reoccurring turrets and the seemingly endless walk so we abandoned the top of the wall and returned to street level and walked around the exterior instead. After about an hour we re-entered the city at the Puerta de Santa Teresa on the west side and we walked through the twisted narrow streets through the commercial centre and the market place and then deftly bypassed the shops back to the cathedral where we turned down the opportunity to pay and go inside in preference for staying outside in the sunshine. The sun was quite strong now but there was a stiff breeze blowing off the plain and accelerating through the narrow streets so I don’t think we appreciated just how strong it was. Soon we were back where we started at the Puerta Del Alcázar and it was time for a final drink and tapas before we prepared to leave.

We could hear the football supporters somewhere close and fuelled by an afternoon of drinking they were even noisier and more boisterous by now. They came towards us and then selected a bar to continue their revelry so we walked in the opposite direction and found a nice bar with pavement tables where we had a beer and an excellent portion of Spanish omelette. There were more blue and white scarves about by this time as fans were making their way to the football stadium but apart from the group making all the noise most were well behaved. The drinking group were all happy now and in very high spirits and I expect they were even happier after the game because I checked the football results later and Arandina won the match 2-1.

Football is the national sport of Spain and it is immensely popular. The top clubs play in La Liga and below that the Spanish league is divided into three main divisions, two of which are sub-divided into regional competitions. Division 1 and division 2a are national leagues. Division 2b is divided into four regional leagues (central, north, east and south) and division 3 consists of local groups regionalised to sensibly cut down on travelling and expense. This is the league in which Real Ávila play, but have aspirations of promotion through the 2009 play offs.

Castile - Day 4, Castilla y Leon

We had spent nearly four hours in Toledo but that wasn’t nearly enough time to appreciate fully the medieval magnificence of the place and in truth we had given ourselves too much to do in one day and with still a long way to go to reach our final destination for the day we had to leave before we were ready and before we had seen everything we wanted to see. On reflection our itinerary should have included a night in Toledo to give us more time but that wasn’t an option now because we had a hotel waiting for us in Ávila.

Leaving Toledo was as easy as driving in and quickly we were out of the city and driving north again and skirting around Madrid with another one hundred and fifty kilometres to go. For the first part of the journey there was nothing very special or exciting, every twenty kilometres or so there was a ruined castle completing the Spanish defensive ring around Madrid and we seemed tantalising close to the cities and towns that I recognised from the Sharpe novels and the Peninsular War stories, Talavera, Badajoz, Salamanca and Ciudad Real but these were all to the west on the way to Portugal and we had no time to detour to any of them.

We crossed into Castilla y Leon and the scenery quickly began to change as we left the flat plains completely behind and began to drive through pine forests with Alpine like meadows, lakes and rivers and snow capped mountains. We were climbing all the time and it was a complete transformation as we left behind the picturesque whitewashed villages of La Mancha and the towns now had more similarity in style with those we had seen in Galicia and Cantabria and had lost the appearance of Mediterranean Spain. Finally we reached a desolate treeless table top plateau with a wilderness landscape and giant grey boulders lying randomly on the bracken coloured land and then we dropped a little and at eleven hundred metres started to approach Ávila, the highest provincial capital in Spain. On the way in we stopped at a Lidl supermarket to buy some wine and when we stepped out of the car we noticed immediately that at this height it was quite a bit cooler than we had become accustomed to.

The old city of Ávila is completely enclosed within a medieval wall and as our hotel was inside we drove through one of the main gates and into tangle of narrow streets. Just as things were beginning to look hopeless we found a tourist information office and went inside for help. The man at the desk explained that parking was very difficult and that it would be best to go back out of the old city and park in a public car park nearby. He gave me a street map that looked like a bowl of spaghetti and told me that it was too difficult for him to try to explain how to get out and that I should just drive around until I get to a gate. ‘Thank you very much, that was very helpful’ I muttered silently under my breath.

Well, we eventually found the way out and the car park and then we had to walk back into the city and to the Plaza Catedral to find the Hotel Palacio De Los Velada. We passed some lovely hotels on the way and I worried about my choice but I needn’t have because it turned out to be exceptional. It was a four star hotel and we don’t usually do four star but I had picked up an excellent half price deal and found ourselves staying in a genuine old seventeenth century palace that had been converted into this excellent hotel with a large internal courtyard, grand stone balconies, sumptuous furniture and a brilliant room. I congratulated myself on a real result as I opened the wine with a corkscrew that we had treated ourselves to at the supermarket. I had a very good feeling about Ávila.

Later we walked out into the city and looked for somewhere to eat. Our first choice refused to serve off of the menu del dia so we said 'no thank you', promptly left and then found a rustic sort of place serving simple meals from the cheaper menu and we had a meal of Castilian soup and the local speciality of roasted suckling pig. On the walk back to the hotel there was a velvet sky full of bright stars and a big full moon that reflected off of the snow on the Gredos Sierra Mountains and things looked very promising for another good day tomorrow.

Castile - Day 4, Toledo

Toledo has always been one of the most important cities in Spain and for many years it contested the status of capital with nearby Madrid and was in fact the principal city until 1560. But Madrid gradually came to prominence under the Hapsburg Monarchy and Phillip II moved his court there and made it his capital in 1561. Toledo compensated for this by reinventing itself as the principal religious city in the country and today remains the seat of the Primate of all Spain.

At the end of the climb we entered the city at the busy main square, the Plaza Zocodover, which was surrounded by tall imperial buildings and confusing little streets running off it in all directions. Without a map we were a bit disorientated and confused because this was easily the biggest place we had visited so far. It was hot and claustrophobic and it felt tense and a little bit edgy with a distinctly vibrant buzz. After a while we established our bearings and walked to the Alcázar, which was closed for improvements to a planned new museum but being at the top of the city did have spectacular views over the river and the lands stretched out to the south. We were still unsure of our location and after an aborted refreshment stop at a bar with a broken loo and unacceptably loud music we threaded our way into the maze of narrow streets and walking in the general direction of the Cathedral.

It was time to stop for refreshment and we spotted tables and activity in a large courtyard and chose, rather carelessly it turned out, a table in the sunshine. The waiter looked like Victor Mature and he immediately approached and provided us with menus and then hung about to hurry an order. It was quite expensive so we explained that we would just have a drink and this seemed to displease him greatly. We were served the beers but he was most unfriendly and made us feel quite unwelcome and awkward so we drank it quickly and left. Next door there was a friendly little tapas bar so we slipped in there instead and had an assortment of tasty dishes and a second beer. The unfriendly expensive place had about half a dozen staff and no customers and this place was full to overflowing with just one, rushed off his feet, waiter and there was a message in there somewhere.

After lunch we walked to the Cathedral and paid the entrance fee of €7, which turned out to be excellent value compared to the €2 to get into the church in Belmonte. It is one of the biggest cathedrals in the world and the interior is not at all austere as some cathedrals can be. Slightly annoying was the fact that for those who didn’t want to pay the admission charge they could enter by a side door and although they couldn’t walk around freely and see all of the internal rooms and the especially impressive choir area, they could certainly see and appreciate the magnificent structure for free.

Outside the Cathedral we found a tourist information office and now we had a map the city was suddenly much easier to negotiate. In the past Toledo had changed hands many times and it was renowned for its diversity and religious toleration and we visited a synagogue with, unusually for a synagogue, free admission and then after walking through a warren of mazy streets came out on the other side overlooking the modern town to the north. Every available square metre of this rocky outcrop has been built upon and the buildings are heaped together in a random and haphazard way with cobbled lanes revealing new delights at every twist and turn. We negotiated the narrow confusing streets and the surprises back towards the Plaza Zocodover and as we did so passed through an area of artisans workshops where metal workers were making swords and knives and displaying them in the windows.

Traditionally Toledo is famous for its production of steel and especially of swords and the city is still a centre for the manufacture of knives and other steel implements. For soldiers and adventurers a sword made of Toledo steel was a must have item because the quality of the steel and the skill of the blacksmiths combined to make an exceptionally strong and perfect lethal weapon. The Three Musketeers had Toledo steel swords and so did Don Diego de la Vega who was more famously known as Zorro. The manufacturing process was a carefully guarded secret and to make such an exceptional weapon they had to select the very best raw materials and then follow a complicated technical process to achieve the right balance between hard and soft steel forged at a temperature of 1454º Fahrenheit for exactly the right length of time and followed by the critical cooling and shaping process. So complicated was this whole procedure and so perfect was the finished weapon that to achieve this level of precision a master craftsman would typically only be able to make two or three blades in a year. No wonder they were so expensive!

Castile - Day 4, Toledo via Consuegra

It was going to be a long day so we got up early ready for a quick start and as usual my first job was to check the weather. The air felt fresher and from the hotel window I could see cloud to the east, which was a bit of a worry, but the lady on Spanish breakfast television seemed confident that it was going to be fine and out to the west it was clear blue and that was the direction in which we were heading. After breakfast and check out we packed the car and started on the one hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Toledo.

We drove first to the town of Alcázar de San Juan but this wasn’t because of any sort of research just an instinct that it would be interesting based on what seemed to be a promising name. I should have carried out some research because it didn’t seem very appealing at all, there wasn’t a castle to be seen and the clouds had caught us up and overtaken us and there was a bleached out sort of chalky whiteness to the sky so we carried on without stopping. Somewhere just west of the town we crossed the old A4 highway and that reminded me of the mad drive through Spain with my brother and two friends in 1984 when we drove from southern Portugal to the French border in thirty-six hours in a clapped out Ford Escort.

Back in the hotel there had been pictures of a castle and a row of windmills at the next town of Consuegra so as it came into view we left the main road and headed towards the top of the hill where they stood overlooking the town. From below, the castle looked magnificent but on close inspection it too was in a bit of a sorry state of disrepair but from here there were terrific views over the great plain of Castile and it was easy to see why this was once a very important military place as it guarded the direct route from the south to Toledo and Madrid. The castle was once a stronghold of the Knights of San Juan, the Spanish branch of the Knight's Hospitallers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

As well as the castle Consuegra is famous for its windmills which remained in use until the beginning of the 1980s. They were originally built by the Knights and were used to grind the grain that was grown on the plain and they were passed down through the generations of millers from fathers to sons. The eleven Consuegra windmills are some of the best examples of Spanish windmills in Castilla-La Mancha and although it was a little cool at the top of the hill it was a good time to see them because there were very few visitors this early in the morning.

After leaving Consuegra we rejoined the road and headed north to Toledo and on the way the clouds evaporated and the sun poured through and we passed more castles at Mora and at Almonacid but we didn’t stop again. The scenery began to change too as it became more untidy and scrubby as we left the chequerboard fields and their delightful colours behind. Just before midday we reached the outskirts of Toledo and at the top of the city we could see the Alcázar and the Cathedral and we followed the signs to the historical centre and found a very large and convenient car park right on the edge of the city and in my league table of Spanish city car parks Toledo went straight to the top. At the bottom by the way remains Seville!

It might have been right on the edge of the City but to get there involved a rather strenuous climb to reach it because Toledo is built on the top of a craggy outcrop of rock that in the middle ages made it impregnable to hostile forces. The whole city is a sort of natural castle with a moat, the Tagus River, running in a looping gorge around three sides of it. The only way an enemy could take it was to attack the north side and that was difficult because that was the most strongly fortified part of the city walls. The Tagus is the fourth longest river in Western Europe and the most important in Iberia and from Toledo it flows all the way to the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon in Portugal.

Molly goes on Holiday

Molly is just over six months old and she has just returned from her first overseas holiday to Ibiza. I compare this to my own overseas travelling experiences, which didn’t begin until I was twenty-two years old.

When I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s family holidays came once a year and were rotated tri-annually between a caravan in Norfolk, a caravan in Cornwall and a caravan in Wales. I’m not being ungrateful because these holidays were great fun and in those days it was all that my parents could afford. To be perfectly honest the very idea of going to Europe was completely absurd, I knew of people who had been to France or Spain (or said that they had) but I always regarded them as slightly eccentric and wondered if they were telling the whole truth! As for going further than Europe I might as well have made plans to go to the moon!

Foreign travel used to be expensive and was beyond the pocket of most ordinary people. When British European Airways first launched its air service between London and Valencia in 1957 at the start of the package holiday boom the cost of the fare was £38.80p which may not sound a lot now but to put that into some sort of perspective in 1960 my Dad took a job at a salary of £815 a year so that fare would have been about two and a half weeks wages! So for two people – five weeks wages in a single income household. It was just out of the question! The average United Kingdom weekly wage today is £450 so on that basis a flight to Spain at British European Airline prices would now be £1,100. Thank goodness then for Ryanair because this week I have just been to Portugal for £30 return which represents just about three hours work today in comparison with what of been about a hundred hours in 1960.

While Molly was away I received daily updates on what she was doing and how much she was enjoying herself and this was different to the old day as well. Staying in touch was difficult because there were no mobile phones, no satellite television with UK news broadcasts and whilst I could happily do without those today there were no bank debit cards or ATMs if you ran short of cash, which I now find rather handy. Getting holiday spending money estimates right was quite important because getting a top up if you needed one was a real problem. On my first holiday I took £60 spending money, which I suppose would be about £200 now and although this didn’t sound a lot I was on full board arrangements at the hotel and I didn’t drink quite so much beer in those days! In 1976 £60 in sterling converted to several thousand Italian Lire and so for a few days I was able to spend as though I was a millionaire.

So whilst it took me over twenty years before stepping on foreign soil, Molly has a stamp on her passport already and I am looking forward to August when I will be taking her to France for a week at the seaside, so that will be two stamps in the passport before she is one year old. I hope she inherits my travelling obsession and I am going to do everything to encourage it!

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Castile - Day 3, Segóbriga

We needed something to do for the afternoon so after consulting the guide book and the information available at the hotel reception we decided to drive to the Roman ruins at Segóbriga about fifty kilometres away. I wasn’t sure that there would be a great deal to see there so I drove deliberately slowly and stopped often for photo opportunities of the fields with their attractive contours and delightful pastel hues. Along the way we looked for somewhere to eat and passed through a couple of villages but there was little chance of food and drink because the people that lived there probably thought that Belmonte was exciting. Along the way we left the road to follow a track to the castle of Almenara but it too was in a state of disrepair and closed so we returned to the road and carried on. Close to our destination we spotted a hotel and a restaurant and we pulled in and took a table in the garden, but the menu prices were considerably higher than we were prepared to pay so we left abruptly before the staff had noticed us and continued on our way resigned to staying hungry.

Within a few minutes we spotted the signs to Segóbriga and as we turned into the historic site we were immediately astounded by the size of the place and it turned out that this is the most important Roman archaeological site in all of Spain. Amazing! And I had never even heard of it. There was a café on site where we had an overpriced bocadillo and a beer before moving on to the entrance where a Spanish lady seemed genuinely pleased to see visitors from England and gave us some precise and clear instructions to make sure we enjoyed our visit to the full. First of all there was a little film about the Romans in Spain and then a considerable walk to get to the main site and the excavations.

Segóbriga was a textbook designed Roman city with a theater, a five thousand seater amphitheater, a chariot racetrack (circus), a basilica, a temple, public baths, a cistern and a complex system of sewers; everything in fact that you would expect to find in an important city of Rome. It was incredible to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the amphitheatre, sit in the seats of the theatre and imagine that in this very place there were gladiators in its amphitheater, old Latin plays in its theater, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates walking around the Forum, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

Segóbriga was a mining town and the mines brought great wealth and made some of the local families very rich, but they weren’t mining for precious metals or fuel but for a very specialised commodity, plaster, or rather gypsum, which in its crystal state (selenite) is transparent and the rocks could be split into fine sheets to make windows in an age before the Romans had begun to manufacture and use glass for this purpose.

In ancient Rome buildings had wind eyes, which were square or rectangular holes in walls to let in light and air but without glass panes. To let in the light had the disadvantage of letting in the weather as well so probably most of the time people kept those windows blocked with a curtain or a shutter. The idea to use the sheets of crystal gypsum for window panes came around the turn of the millennium when an architect imported some from Spain and used them as skylights to light the public baths in Rome. This caught on quickly and the rich started doing the same for their houses and villas and in time it was used as wind eye glass and the very best quality gypsum came from right here in Segóbriga.

This place was most unexpected and after Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy, Split in Croatia and Segesta, in Sicily, this was possibly the best Roman archeological site that I have visited. Because we had to wait so long for uncooperative people to move so that we could take the perfect uncluttered photographs it took almost three hours to explore the site and then to visit the museum and it was a long walk round so what had started out as a planned easy day had turned out instead to be very full and very tiring.

We drove back to Belmonte in the early evening and after a rest and a glass of wine did the same things as the previous night and went to the hotel down the street, where the friendly barman insisted on showing us the downstairs cellar bar that didn’t open until way past our bed time, and then we ate again in the hotel restaurant and had a third good traditional style Spanish evening meal. This was our last night in Belmonte and as we packed our bags so that we could make an early start in the morning we reflected on what had been three excellent days in Castilla-La Mancha and we looked forward to a long drive in the morning to the city of Toledo and after that on to Ávila in Castilla y Leon nearly three hundred kilometres away to the west of Madrid.

El Cid

The period between 500 and 1250 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become a cherished feature of the self-image of the Spanish people. It has become embellished into a sort of organised Catholic national crusade and although there is some truth in this much of it was simply due to the territorial ambitions of competing northern Spanish kingdoms such as Asturias and León.

On returning from Spain I thought I might buy a DVD of the film but it seems quite difficult to get hold of and also quite expensive so I suppose I will have to wait until it gets a rerun on TV one Christmas.

El Cid is a historical epic starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren and tells the story of the heroic warrior as he sets about recovering Spain from the Moors. With its charismatic stars, a cast of thousands (wearing real armour and using real swords) and its grand themes of love, loyalty and justice, it perpetuates a glowing image of the greatest hero in Spanish history. El Cid was a towering and talismanic figure, the perfect chivalric knight, devoted to his wife and children, a magnificent warrior, unerringly true to his word and merciful to his opponents. Most of all, he was sworn to the service of God and dedicated to saving Spain from the fearsome invaders from North Africa.

The reality of course is that this wasn’t a completely accurate portrayal of the great warrior and the life of Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar (c. 1043-99), known to us as ‘El Cid’, from the Arabic sayyid, ‘lord’, differed from the film version in many crucial respects.

One aspect of the film that that is somewhat confusing is the relationship between the Cid and some of the Spanish Muslims who he holds in high regard and treats with respect and here we begin with an aspect of the film, which is, broadly speaking, accurate. The Cid’s generosity to some of his Muslim opponents and his alliances with local Muslims against other, more fundamentalist, Islamic armies are squarely based on fact.

Three centuries before El Cid lived, the Muslims of North Africa had conquered Iberia but slowly the Christians had regained control of the top part of the peninsula and the two faiths established a practical live and let live arrangement. Relations between the two faiths in Spain had yet to be sharpened by the inflammatory and inflexible rhetoric of crusade and jihad and furthermore, it was quite common for local groups of Christians and Muslims to make alliances to fight other Christians and Muslims. But things were changing and El Cid lived just as the age of the Crusades was beginning and the Christians probably had their eye on the bits of the peninsula with the very best beaches.

El Cid lived at this time and the film shows him having Muslim allies, even though it carefully omits the numerous occasions when he acted for Muslim paymasters against Christians because he was, in short, a warrior for hire, a mercenary, who spent much of his career fighting for whoever paid him the most and the film also pays tribute to his formidable military prowess for which others were prepared to pay. His finest victory was the capture of Valencia in 1094, which is shown in the film on a grand Hollywood epic scale, complete with siege towers, cavalry charges and the full clash of arms.

So there is at least some truth in the film and its plot but it on the whole it is a highly romaticised version of the story. The explanation for this lies in the identity of its historical consultant: Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who was the foremost Spanish historian of his age and the author of the standard biography of the Cid, first published in 1929.

Despite Pidal’s eminence, the portrait of the Cid he suggested to the movie-makers was flawed in two ways. First, in the evidence he used: Pidal gave substantial credence to the Poema de Mio Cid, a work written at the height of the crusading age and, crucially, fifty years after after the Cid’s death. Then, his valiant deeds against Muslims made him a suitable exemplar to inspire a generation of holy warriors fighting the Crusades, and his life quickly moved into the realms of legend.

The second reason for Pidal’s characterisation of El Cid lies in the overlap between the historian’s version of medieval Iberia and many of his own perceptions about the Spain of his own lifetime. To him, the notion of a patriotic hero uniting his troubled country was highly attractive and one that fitted the nationalist mood of Spain in the 1930s. Hence Heston’s El Cid repeatedly demands a victory ‘for Spain’, but in fact Spain as a national entity was of little relevance in the eleventh century and ‘for Castile!’ would have been a more likely rallying cry.

The famous end of the film is based entirely on legend. Shortly before he died he allegedly saw a vision of St. Peter, who told him that he should gain a victory over the Saracens after his death. So he was clothed in a coat of mail and was mounted upon his favourite horse, fastened into the saddle and at midnight was borne out of the gate of Valencia accompanied by a thousand knights. They marched to where the Moorish king and his army was camped, and at daylight made a sudden attack. The Moors awoke and it seemed to them that there were as many as seventy thousand knights, all dressed in robes of pure white and at their head El Cid holding in his left hand a banner representing reconquest and in the other a fiercesome sword. So afraid were the Moors that they fled to the sea, and twenty thousand of them were drowned as they tried to reach their ships.

This blog entry is based on a review of the film by Dr Jonathan Phillips of the University of London.

Castile - Day 3, Belmonte

It was another excellent morning and behind the dark shutters the early morning sun was waiting to pounce as soon as they were opened. The sky was clear and it was blissful, serene and tranquil with absolute silence but for the merry chirruping of the house martins nesting in the garden and beginning their days work.

The breakfast room was busier this morning as a few families had checked in the previous afternoon so while we waited to use the toasting machine I had a look around the room and the pictures on the wall. At the far end there were photographs of the actor Charlton Heston in the film El Cid and the man on duty behind the bar tried to explain to me in a combination of Spanish and English (mostly Spanish) that some of the movie was filmed right here in Belmonte at the fifteenth century castle that overlooks the town. That was something interesting that I didn’t know and good news too because today we planned a leisurely exploration of the town and a visit to the fortress and after breakfast we set out to do just that.

Although the sun was shining it was quite cool in the shade so we kept to the sunny side of the street and made for the castle. On the way we stopped to ask directions and a lady showed us the route but explained in sign language that it wasn’t open at the moment. This didn’t come as a complete surprise I have to say because there was an enormous crane sticking out of the top of it and even from a distance it was obvious that the builders were in. Despite this it looked well worth an external visit anyway so we left by a town gate and began to walk up an unmade path towards the castle. The walk involved quite an arduous climb, especially as I insisted on trying to reach the highest point for the best view and this meant negotiating an almost vertical ascent up a loose shale path that crumbled away under our feet at every step.

But we were rewarded with great views over the town and from here we could clearly see its military footprint because Belmonte is a fortified town at the foot of the magnificently sturdy castle which was part of the ring of fortifications that marked the front line in the medieval power struggle between the Spanish Christians and the African Moors. On the way back down to the castle we crossed the exact spot where Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren filmed the closing scenes of El Cid.

El Cid is the national hero of Spain, a bit like our Queen Elizabeth I or Winston Churchill. He was a warrior, a nobleman, a knight, and a champion. He became a legend within only a few years of his death and most Spaniards know about him because at school they read an epic poem called El Cantar de Mío Cid. It is the first great poem in the Spanish language and was written about 1140, only fifty years or so after he died. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar known as El Cid Campeador, was a Castilian nobleman, a gifted military leader and a diplomat who fought for and then fell out with Alfonso VI, was exiled but later returned, and in the fight against the Moors conquered and governed the city of Valencia. It’s a good story but the film takes a few historical liberties so it’s best not to rely upon it as a source document for serious study.

The castle is a declared national monument and it was closed for some serious renovation and no one seems to know with any degree of certainty when it will open again. It was a shame not to be able to visit but we walked around the outside underneath its imposing towers and told ourselves it was a good excuse to come back sometime. Next to the castle were a row of three whitewashed windmills but this was spoilt somewhat by a new hotel that was almost finished and looked embarrassingly out of place. From here there were uninterrupted views over the Meseta, the massive central plateau of Spain laid out like a patchwork quilt in front of us. It was obvious why they built the castle her because no one was going to sneak up on them, that’s for sure!

From the castle we took the road back into town which took us through lazy whitewashed streets where old ladies in black dresses sat gossiping in the doorways and men folk sat on benches discussing important matters of state. In the centre of town there were a few shops, a mini market, butcher, grocer and a fishmonger, an electrical shop that didn’t look as if it had sold anything for years, a florist and a photographer. What we really wanted was a bar with outside tables but there were none and I formed the impression that the town was really only just waking up to spring and after a longer than normal winter wasn’t yet quite certain enough that it was here to have the confidence to put the tables and chairs outside.

After a visit to a pharmacy to purchase sticking plaster for blisters (picked up on my climb to the top of the shale path, so entirely my fault) we returned to the hotel we had visited last evening and had a drink and another plate of olives. Afterwards we walked to the other side of the town to some more windmills, made a visit to the collegiate church which was absurdly overpriced at €2 each and took about ten minutes to look around (and that was dawdling) and that was it and after only three hours that was Belmonte visited, seen and finished.