Spain 2011, Consuegra, Tembleque and Aranjuez

I realise that this isn’t the correct technical meteorological term but when we woke up the next morning, it was absolutely chucking it down! From outside there was the sound of (very) heavy rain and when the shutters were opened we were confronted with a blanket of thick grey cloud and horizontal precipitation thrashing against the window – it was all a bit dull and dismal and did not look at all promising. But, I have great faith in the expression ‘rain before seven, clear by eleven’ that I was reasonably confident of improvement as we mopped up the wet tiles under the balcony door, dressed and went for breakfast.

After a second equally good three course breakfast we reluctantly packed our bags and checked out of the hotel. It was still hammering down outside and when we emerged from the underground car park we were trying to find our way in driving rain and in some places through flooded streets. For some reason we found it more difficult than it really should have been to find our way out of the labyrinth of one-way streets and with wind screen wipers on double speed I am certain that we did two or three circuits of the town before we found the main road and a filling station and then plotted a course north towards Madrid with a couple of stops planned along the way.

To begin with our route took us along some nerve jangling minor roads but eventually we found some proper highways and the pace picked up as we continued to travel north. The rain was easing and with better weather to the west I was becoming increasingly confident of my eleven o’clock prediction.

After an hour or so we started to get close to Consuegra, famous for its castle and windmills and after getting confused at a motorway junction we eventually began to approach the outskirts of what can only really be described as a town of extreme contrasts. From what we saw of Consuegra it is scruffy and uncared for, the streets are grimy and the roads full of precarious potholes but rising high above all of the disappointment is a line of whitewashed, blue domed windmills standing sentinel over the town and the adjacent plain. Don Quixote’s windmills sit in a line along the top of a steep hill and they look down on the flat red dirt plains of La Mancha, their sails tied down and no longer spun by the wind. They are almost smug in what is now their supremely safe tourist protected environment.

The weather was wild and showing no signs of improvement and as we walked between the black sails and admired the bulk of the castle nearby we drew strange glances from bus tourists who were wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves that were much more appropriate than our linens and short sleeves.

It was cold so we didn’t stay long and drove back through the untidy town and rejoined the Autovia heading north. Our next stop was the town of Tembleque but when we pulled in and parked, although it had finally stopped raining we were not terribly hopeful. It was dreary and overcast and the Plaza Mayor that we had stopped to see with its balconies, painted colonnades and stone pillars (not unlike Almagro but without the sunshine) looked disappointing and dreary and sadly won’t be going into our top five so after a quick visit to the tourist information museum we were soon back on the road.

We were on our way now to Aranjuez and the site of a Royal Palace of King Juan Carlos but the road passed by the town of Ocaña which is famous for two things, a Peninsular War battle that was the biggest defeat of the war for the defending Spanish army and for having the third largest Plaza Mayor in Spain after Madrid and Salamanca. I am not sure about that because we never actually got there but it might well have the biggest prison in Spain right next door and on account of the dodgy looking men hanging around the gate and the dreary weather we gave it a miss and drove straight by.

And so in mid afternoon we arrived in Aranjuez, parked the car, stopped at a café where we sat near the window and lamented the woeful weather and then walked the short distance to the Royal Palace. King Juan Carlos has eight Royal Palaces to choose from but I suspect he doesn’t stay at this one very often because it didn’t look very ‘lived in’, if you know what I mean; most are close to Madrid and one is on the island of Mallorca. We walked through the gardens and then paid the entrance fee to go inside and take the tour through a succession or rooms (all the same, by the way) and then some exhibits about life at the Royal Spanish court through the ages.

To be honest the day was in danger of becoming a bit of a let-down compared with those that had gone before and I think we were both a bit disappointed when we returned to the car and set off for our final destination, Chinchon, which we knew well on account of visiting there a couple of times previously. However, by some minor miracle as we drove the short distance the grey cloud began to shatter and disperse and by the time we approached one of our favourite places in Spain there was at last some welcome blue sky and although my eleven o’clock prediction was at least four hours overdue we were glad of that!



Spain 2011, Almagro and the Ruta de Don Quixote

After four days of travelling, eight-hundred kilometres driving and some serious sightseeing, today we were planning an altogether less demanding sort of experience with a leisurely full day in the provincial town of Almagro.

Breakfast at the Retiro del Maestre was simply wonderful and easily the best of the week, in fact, if we were compiling a list of the top five hotel breakfasts ever then this would certainly be in there. It was the usual thing in terms of content but it had clearly been lovingly prepared by the ladies of the house and the cook fussed around the breakfast room, making recommendations, making sure everyone was happy and brazenly fishing for compliments. And she deserved them all because this was truly an excellent breakfast.

Almagro is an old town that was once much more important than it is today, two hundred and fifty years ago it was for a short time the provincial capital of La Mancha (1750-61) but religious decline set in during the reign of Charles III and it fared badly and suffered damage in the Napoleonic and the Carlist wars. Eventually it was eclipsed by its neighbours, Ciudad Real and Bolaños de Calatrava and it became the quiet town that it is today on, not being unkind, a secondary, less important, tourist trail.

Talking of trails, as we stepped out into the street we were now inevitably on the ‘Ruta de Don Quixote’, which is the golden thread that binds the Castilian tourist industry together in a ribbon of towns, castles and windmills stretching from Cuenca to Toledo.

Don Quixote is a novel written by the seventeenth century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and is regarded as the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age. It is the story of a man who believes that he is a knight, and recounts his adventures as he rights wrongs, mistakes peasants for princesses, and “tilts at windmills,” mistakenly believing them to be evil giants. As one of the earliest works of modern western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In 2002 a panel of one hundred leading world authors declared Don Quixote to be the best work of fiction ever written, ahead even of works by Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Cervantes has also been credited with shaping modern literary style, and Don Quixote has been acclaimed as “the first great novel of world literature”. Since publication in 1605 it is reputed to be the most widely read and translated book on the planet after the Bible. I tried to read it once but found it a bit heavy going so gave up quite quickly but as we walked along I resolved to give it another go upon returning home.

The historical centre of Almagro is conveniently located inside a circle of modern roads so this morning we circumnavigated it all as we walked through surprisingly wide and airy streets with the ubiquitous boxy white houses with little balconies and ornamental black iron grills over the windows where much of the town has been redeveloped to accommodate modern living demands. Along the route there were churches, a wide open park and a convent, now converted to a Parador hotel. We went inside to take a look but Parador room and menu prices are not really for us so we weren’t tempted to stay and instead made our way back to the Plaza Mayor.

Although it was midday it was quiet in the Plaza as we selected a table for a refreshment break and we watched restaurant owners preparing for what they hoped would be a lunch time rush and then we looked around some of the traditional local craft and souvenir shops and then the not so traditional Mercadona for some essential alcohol supplies because our plan now was to return to the hotel and spend the afternoon relaxing in the sun on the roof terrace.

As the sun moved from east to west in the sky we let the afternoon slip away with a bottle of local wine, a game or two of cards and a couple of chapters of our books but after a while some cloud was beginning to gatecrash the sky and gradually it turned from azure blue to milky white as the sun was blotted out. This was our cue to leave the terrace and return to the town for the final piece of sightseeing.

This was the Corral de Comedias, which is a sixteenth century theatre, similar to those that Shakespeare would have been familiar with in Elizabethan England, built in what was the courtyard of an Inn and which today is the only fully preserved example of a theatre of this type in the World. It is a working theatre still today and inside it is an immaculate example of a theatre of the golden age, built on three levels with galleries and private boxes running around all three sides of the still open courtyard. It was an unexpected little gem but it didn’t take long to walk around and listen to the audio commentary so after we had finished we stopped for a drink and compiled a shopping list of souvenirs that we could confidently carry back in our hand luggage and agreed on some local pottery and some water colour postcards of the main sights of the town.

There was time for a few more early evening minutes on the terrace but the weather was continuing to deteriorate and worryingly the hotel staff were beginning to prepare for bad weather by collecting up the cushions and winding in the sun shades that were no longer needed and this disappointed us but to be fair, given the pessimistic forecast before we arrived in Spain, we had been lucky all week so far with the weather.

To our surprise, by the time we went out again later the day finished with blue sky again as we sat in the Plaza for pre-dinner drinks and then, despite the shock of the rare pork the previous evening, dined at the same restaurant again where I was careful to choose something more conventional.

It had been a good day in Almagro and after dinner and before returning for the final time to the hotel we strolled one last time through the Plaza and had a final drink in a busy bar that was full of extended Spanish families all starting the weekend here in the square. It had been a quiet day but we had enjoyed the rest.

Spain 2011, The Plaza Mayor

We were staying at the Hotel Retiro del Maestre, a renovated old Spanish nobleman’s house on a street leading to the main square and we found it easily and left the car in the underground car park. It was a friendly family run hotel with spacious and comfortable public rooms, a large outside terrace basking in the sun and was a nice room for us with a view over the garden.

It was late afternoon by this time and with the sun beginning to dip we didn’t linger long but made our way quickly to the Plaza Mayor to find a bar. On the way we passed by the equestrian statue of the Conquistador Diego de Almagro and then entered the rectangular Plaza. At a hundred metres long and forty metres wide and flanked on both sides by arcades of Tuscan columns supporting overhead galleries all painted a uniform shade of green and fully glazed in a central European style this place is truly unique in Spain. These galleries were originally open and used as grandstands for public events, religious festivals and even bullfights that were held here until 1785, when they were finally banned by King Carlos III.

We choose a table on the sunny side of the Plaza, ordered beer and wine and just sat and watched the activity while we nibbled the inevitable olives. The bar owner shooed away some small boys playing football, telling them to play elsewhere and families began to arrive and the bar quickly filled up with chattering customers. Walking around the square was a proud grandmother pushing a young baby in an immaculate pram which matched her pristine outfit and she completed at least a dozen circuits, stopping frequently to chat and to show off the small child to anyone who showed the slightest interest.

The Plaza Mayor is the most important part of a Spanish town or city and I really cannot think of an equivalent in the United Kingdom where we have public squares but use them in an entirely different way. This is the place where people meet, relax and enjoy themselves; it is generally flanked with shops and restaurants and usually has the town hall and the main church somewhere close by. When we arrive somewhere new it is usually the first place we make for because sitting with a glass of wine and a complimentary tapas it is the best place to be to get a feeling for the town and its people.

In the search for real Spain (not the coasts and the Costas), in the past three years we have visited and enjoyed dozens of Plaza Mayors; Madrid, the largest, Salamanca, the second largest, Toledo, next to its towering cathedral and the tiled Plaza de España in Seville. We liked them all and we began now to compile a list with a view to choosing our top five favourites. We considered Ávila, Mérida and Valladolid, Cáceres and Santiago de Compostella in Galicia but after a lively debate weighing up the pros and cons and putting forward the case for each one in turn we finally agreed on the top five but could not reach consensus on the actual order.

So this is our list: Segovia in Castilla y Leon because of the Cathedral and the architecture and the little streets running away from it like spokes from a wheel, Trujillo, where we had been only today, because of its unspoilt medieval charm, the unpretentious and functional Ciudad Rodrigo, Chinchón with its open balconies and bullfights and although we had only just arrived we liked this place so much that we both agreed to include Almagro in the list.

After a second leisurely drink we paid up and left the square and strolled back to our hotel where we asked for some dining recommendations and the receptionist convinced us to go to her favourite just a couple of streets away so after we had rested and changed we took her advice and found the restaurant in a side street off the main square.

It was nice if not conventional and it had a modern menu with some new twists on traditional meals and I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for rare pork. The sight of a pork chop oozing blood really wasn’t to my taste at all and because I have always thought that anything to do with a pig should be cooked right through it almost spoilt the evening for me as I worried about food poisoning and salmonella and trying to remember the location of the immodium tablets in the suitcase!

Although it wasn’t especially late when we finished the meal, we were tired after a long day that had started three hundred kilometres away in Mérida, taken us to Trujillo and then a three hour drive to Almagro and we were ready for bed. We walked back through the Plaza Mayor that was lively in a subdued sort of way (if that makes sense) and then to the street to the hotel. About half way along we heard Spanish guitars and the clack, clack of castanets and we wondered where it was coming from and then through the pavement level window of a cellar we could see a dancing class in full swing. Some local people suggested that we should go inside and watch so we did just that and before the lesson ended we enjoyed fifteen minutes of genuine Spanish music played by a sort of flamenco skiffle group and a group of young people dancing in true Castillian style.

It was a great way to end the evening!

Spain 2011, The Dehesa of Extremadura and the Olive Groves of Castilla-La Mancha

The journey began well enough and we left Trujillo and started to drive south towards the N430, the main road from Mérida to Ciudad Real but after a few kilometres the satnav found us a shortcut. There was nothing wrong with this at first but at the town of Campo Lugar, which seemed to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere the tarmac road abruptly stopped and became a pot holed pitted shale track that went on for about ten kilometres. I was for turning back but Kim persuaded me to carry on and I conceded and drove with care as the road continued to deteriorate the further we went. I had resolved not to fall out with the satnav lady this week but this part of the journey severely tested my promise to keep calm. Eventually we came to a junction and a proper road and soon we were motoring towards our destination.

Through the east of Extremadura we passed through the oak tree plantations of the dehesa where the land is carefully cultivated and managed. ‘Dehesa’ is the name given to the seemingly endless areas of farmland consisting of groves of low density, mature oak trees because of the poor quality of the soil. Around half of the land of Extremadura is taken up by these dehesas and the spaces between the trees are used to cultivate cereals and as pasture for grazing livestock. The tree species is predominantly evergreen Holm, with Cork Oak grown on richer, more humid soils and at the base of the mountains. Several grades of tree coverage occur with the most open and more easily cultivated holding up to fifteen oaks per hectare, intermediate covering has up to thirty oak trees per hectare and the densest plantings thirty to fifty trees per hectare.

This part of the journey was reminder of just how big Spain is as we motored for mile after mile without meeting any other traffic or without passing through towns or villages. The road just kept grinding endlessly on in an easterly direction in a way that reminded me of the tortuous journey through Andalusia in a clapped out Ford Escort in 1986. The road had no lay-bys, picnic areas or service stations and I was glad that I had topped up the tank earlier in the day as we had left Mérida.

Eventually we passed out of Extremadura and into Castilla-La Mancha and the landscape abruptly changed and what had been a long straight road before now began to twist and turn as we climbed and dropped through undulating hills, river valleys, past huge reservoirs and through vast olive groves. The oak trees had gone now and there were olive trees as far as the eye could see.

This shouldn’t have been surprising because Spain is the world’s leading producer of olives and is by a long way the country with the highest number of olive trees (more than three hundred million), is nowadays the world’s leading olive and olive oil producer and exporter and the world’s leading producer of table olives, which explains why cafés and bars are always so generous with a plate of olives to accompany every drink. Of the two million hectares of olive groves in Spain, 92% are dedicated to olive oil production. The average annual production varies due to the cyclical nature of the harvest, but typically runs between 600,000 and 1,000,000 metric tons, less than a quarter of which is exported.

Olives are gathered from late November to the end of March, depending on the area and the year’s weather. Harvesting is a painstaking task and is done by hand, or with a stick to shake the fruit onto tarpaulins arranged around the tree (it is sometimes done with a mechanical tree shaker, though this can damage a tree). Looking at all of those trees that process must provide plenty of work at harvest time!

By late afternoon the journey was becoming tedious and tiring as we counted down the kilometres to Ciudad Real and Almagro just beyond as we passed through fields of grain decorated with drifts of scarlet poppies and more and more villages as we approached the city. We didn’t stop in Ciudad Real, which was a bit rude, because we were keen to get to our destination and once past the minor traffic hold up in the city we relaxed and enjoyed the last few motoring minutes as we approached our destination.