France, Return to Carcassonne

On the way down to breakfast the next morning, knowing how precious the French can be about their language, I attempted some simple communication with the receptionist about the arrangements for petit dejeuner. I am fairly certain that I selected the right words but graciously concede that I may not have had them in the correct order and this is an annoying thing about the French because they like you to try and speak their language, which is fair, but then ridicule you if you don’t get everything absolutely grammatically correct, which isn’t very encouraging. It’s a good job we don’t humiliate them when they mangle the English language with zis and zat and their inability to understand when and when not to use the letter H, but anyway, this woman looked at me as though I was from the very bottom of the evolutionary chain and asked with a large dollop of sarcasm if I would prefer it if she spoke English? Most Europeans are really pleased if you attempt a few words but the French really don’t like anything that they perceive as a corruption of their ‘beautiful language’ and I nodded meekly and said yes please.

It was overcast and much cooler this morning as we walked through the streets of Castres to the car park and we were glad to get in the car, turn the heater on and set off back to Carcassonne for our early afternoon flight as yesterday’s blistering afternoon temperature was fading away into a recent memory. I was fairly sure of the way to go but the Satnav lady decided that I would like to take the difficult scenic journey instead of the direct route and before we reached the main road at Mazamet she took me onto a minor road and into the Forêt de Montaud and soon we were climbing again along winding roads through a deciduous beech forest back into the Black Mountains.

I could have asked Kim to plot a more sensible alternative route using the paper map but the truth is that she isn’t too good with maps and this responsibility generally brings on a panic attack as he stares blankly at the multi coloured squiggles hopelessly looking for a clue and before she has even pinpointed our position it is generally too late because we will have missed the turning anyway. I shouldn’t really be critical because her inability with maps would be rather like me being asked to interpret a knitting pattern and she is very good at that.

I suppose this was going to save us a kilometre or two and it was quite picturesque but it was at the expense of our timetable and as we planned to drive into Carcassonne and to La Cité for a final coffee before going to the airport at a convenient junction I eventually overruled the Satnav and instead of driving deeper into the forest made for the direct route and the main highway.

We arrived in Carcassonne at ten o’clock which gave us an hour in the old fortress so we walked through the main gate and the narrow streets and made our way to the main square where it was too chilly to sit on the pavement so we were forced inside instead. While we sat with our final drink we reviewed our holiday and made a comparison between France and Spain to see if we could reach consensus on which we like best. We had enjoyed visiting this region of France but I have to say that we both agreed that we have a preference for Spain.

It isn’t fair to make that statement without some explanation so here are our reasons: First of all the centrepiece of every town and city in Spain, the Plaza Mayor, which is the first place we visit when we arrive somewhere new but there isn’t the equivalent in France; secondly, Tapas and the complimentary bowls of food in the bars and bodegas which the French don’t do and thirdly, staying with bars for a moment, the prices are much better in Spain because I can never understand the sky-high price of drinks in French bars and restaurants; fourthly I’m afraid it is back to the unpleasant subject of dog excrement because this really is a most disagreeable aspect of France.

Leaving the city we drove to the airport and returned the car and when I enquired everyone seemed to have forgotten about the refund that I was due on the rental overcharge and I had to remind the staff at the car hire office. I didn’t get the refund of course just a sort of vague promise that it would be sorted out and that was the best that I could hope for without making a scene or trashing the place.

Although the airport was tiny it had a high quality restaurant overlooking the runway and bearing in mind that the last place anyone would choose to go out to lunch in England would be Stansted or East Midlands Airports this seemed to be a popular place with local people who were arriving here by the tableful just for their lunch. As we sat by the window waiting for the plane to arrive the weather continued to deteriorate as grey sky muscled in from the west and brought some spots of rain and by the time we had passed through security and immigration control and were boarding the plane there was a downpour which gave everyone a thorough soaking as they queued to climb the aircraft steps.

Like the terminal building that struggled to accommodate all of the passengers the runway looked barely long enough to cope with a Boeing 737-800 and I noticed that the end of it curled up into an incline like you see on aircraft carriers presumably to give the plane a bit of last minute assistance in getting off the ground but the pilot got us up without incident and we quickly flew into the clouds and below us France was completely obscured from view.

Back home I contacted EconomyCarRentals.com and their customer services department told me that it would take at least twenty days to deal with the overcharging mix up but they would deal with it as soon as they could.

post script: It took nearly thirty days, several emails and a critical blog post to get it sorted but I did eventually receive my refund but I’ll think twice about using EconomyCarRentals.com ever again.

France, The Canal du Midi

We planned to stay in Beziers today, partly because it seemed good manners to spend some time there rather than dash off elsewhere and partly because I didn’t relish the prospect of reversing the Citroën out of the garage again. So, after another good breakfast we left the hotel and walked through the Park des Poetes which is a lovely oasis of green space with water features, wildlife and winding paths past statues and fountains. We strolled through and out of the park and then an untidy part of the town and underneath the railway line down towards the River L’Orb and the Canal du Midi which is one of the engineering marvels of France.

The idea of creating a waterway as a shortcut between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea had captured the imagination of successive French Kings and governments since Roman times. The regional route overland was slow, uncomfortable and haunted by bandits; the three thousand kilometre passage by sea took at least a month and was also dangerous as ships negotiating the Spanish coast dodged storms and Barbary pirates to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar.

In 1516, King François I invited Leonardo da Vinci to France to carry out a survey of a possible route, but this project was even beyond the great man and was abandoned because of the apparent impossibility of finding a source of water to fill any canal. Finally in the second half of the seventeenth century Paul Riquet had the vision and the courage to finance and complete the project. When finished it boasted ninety-one locks, three hundred and twenty-eight bridges bridges, dams and tunnels, and forty viaducts. In its citation and admission to the list of World Heritage Sites, UNESCO said the canal had “provided the model for the flowering of technology that led directly to the Industrial Revolution and the modern technological age”.

We arrived at the Port Neuf, a basin providing overnight stopping facilities and then walked along the towpath and crossed the river over a later viaduct addition, the longest on the entire canal and built in the nineteenth century to avoid having to use an unpredictable and dangerous stretch of the river. We were intending to walk to the Fonserannes Locks which are the third most popular tourist destination in Languedoc-Roussillon, after the Pont du Gard in Nîmes and the city of Carcassonne. It was about a kilometre and a half and it took us forty minutes to arrive at the car park adjacent to the eight staircase lock which descends just over twenty metres in three hundred rather like a Giant’s staircase.

The locks are considered to be a huge engineering achievement because they had to be cut from solid rock, and descended a hillside with an inconsistent gradient. All of the locks had to contain the same volume of water, but could not have precisely the same shape but nontheless they were built successfully without need of subsequent major repair. Suprisingly perhaps, this amazing piece of engineering was subcontracted out to two illiterate brothers, the Medhailes, and was built by a workforce composed mainly of women.

It wasn’t too busy today with just a few visitors and a handful of barges waiting patiently for the next scheduled operation of the locks. It was quite interesting but I have to say that if this is the third most visited tourist attraction in Languedoc-Roussillon then the region must be short of visitor attractions and I’m not sure that I believe that claim. From the top lock there was a glorious view across the river valley towards Beziers but we turned our back on that and continued to walk along the tree lined canal where two-hundred year old Plane trees with decorative mottled bark lean across the water, their heavy foliage forming an impenetrable canopy of heavily dappled olive-green shade.

The trees have been a feature of the eastern half of the canal from Toulouse to Sète since they were first planted in the 1830s. Their triple purpose was to strengthen the banks, reduce water evaporation by the strong Midi sun and shade the canal boats, which originally transported delicate products like wine and fabrics. But in 2005 disaster struck and for the past six years a fungus has been attacking the trees, spreading along the waterway and defying all attempts to cure or control it. Tree specialists have concluded that it is almost certain all the planes will have to be chopped down, burned and replaced because the trees have been struck by an outbreak of a virulent, incurable microscopic fungus which spreads through the roots and is thought to have first reached France with American GIs in the Second-World-War whose sycamore ammunition boxes were infected. We counted ourselves lucky to have seen these magnificent trees at this time because in a couple of years or so they may well be gone.

After a while we walked back, stopping briefly along the way at a café beside the locks and then we returned to Beziers via a redundant basin called the Chemin du Quai du Port Notre Dame that was once a thriving commercial part of the city lined with warehouses and store rooms but is now a derelict, run down and sadly neglected part of the canal with stagnant water, rotting quaysides and overgrown towpaths that will never be used again.

Having followed this alternative route back from the Fonserannes Locks we were unsure of our location, we were heading towards the thirteenth century Cathedral of Saint Nazaire but we had to cross some busy roads and walk through some poor and run down streets before crossing L’Orb over the Pont Vieux which is the oldest bridge in the city across the river and making our way back to the city.

France, Carcassonne and La Cité

After I had familiarised myself with our temporary transport and we had loaded our bags in the back of the car we set off towards the city and concentrating now on driving on the correct side of the highway and following unfamiliar road signs I soon forgot about the car hire scam.

It took only a few minutes to arrive in the modern city of Carcassonne which seemed strangely quiet for a Saturday afternoon and after a few minutes of parking indecision found a spot with no charges just about five hundred metres from the main attraction and its medieval core, La Cité, a huge walled town that was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997.

For the record France has thirty-seven World Heritage Sites, which is third most in Europe after Italy and Spain.

We were glad that we had parked in the city and not in the official visitor car parks not just because there was a parking charge there but because we now had to walk and across the Pont Vieux and the River Aude which was lined with trees that were just beginning their transformation into Autumn colours. This is the best pedestrian approach to La Cité because, set high up on a hill overlooking the river, Carcassonne’s ancient walled city is picture-book perfect and this fairytale collection of drawbridges, towers and atmospheric cobbled streets was reputedly the inspiration for Walt Disney’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. This may or may not be true but is also similar to the story of Cinderella’s castle in Segovia in Spain.

A stone statue of Dame Carcas stood at the drawbridge entrance to the city and again, whether she is fact or fiction, this is the legend of Carcassonne. When the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne stood before the gates of the city with his rampaging troops, the castle army existed of only one person, Madame Carcas. (Difficult to believe I agree, but I will carry on anyway). Somehow she managed to give the illusion that many men were still on the walls (rather like the movie ‘Home Alone’).

Charlemagne’s plan was to starve out the occupants of the castle and Dame Carcas, rumbling this, threw a pig over the wall, its belly filled with sweet corn to give the impression that it was well fed. Charlemagne was duped and falling for the deception that the castle was both well provisioned and bristling with angry soldiers packed up and left. On witnessing the retreat Madame Carcas triumphantly blew her horn and thus – Carcas sonne. Now this is almost certainly not true and is very similar to the story of the painted oxen during the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Salzburg in Austria but one thing that is true about Carcassonne is that it was used to portray Nottingham Castle in the Kevin Costner film ‘Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves’ and for anyone that has seen the real Nottingham Castle this requires no explanation why.

Carcassonne stood as a fortified city from as far back as Roman times until Napoleon removed it from the list of official national fortifications and it fell into such disrepair that in 1849 the French government decreed that it should be demolished. This prompted an immediate campaign to preserve it as a historical monument and in 1853 restoration work began under the direction of the architect Viollet-le-Duc who repaired the walls and the roofing on the towers and the ramparts. The restoration was strongly criticized during his lifetime for lack of authenticity because recently returning from work in the north of France, he made the error of using slates and restoring the roofs as pointed cones, where local practice was traditionally of tile roofing and low slopes but it is exactly this feature of his restoration that has made Carcassonne such a magical place.

After walking around the outside of the walls we entered the city by a minor entrance and were transported into an alternative world of narrow streets and cobbled alleyways. we were immediately below the flying buttresses and the grotesque gargoyles of the St Nazaire Cathedral, which is a nineteenth century replacement for the original building but still manages to give a realistic medieval impression. We walked around the corkscrew streets and explored the battlements but at €16 each declined to take the Chateaux tour. There are rather too many shops in Carcassonne for my liking but we looked in one or two and puffed our cheeks out in disbelief at the prices and then we compared menu cards in the bars before selecting one that was consistent with our budget where we stopped for a drink.

Spain 2011, Mérida, World Heritage Site (1)

After sleeping well we were looking forward to a five star start to the day, but I have to say that we were generally disappointed by the breakfast which was served in a dimly lit room with no staff and although there was plenty of choice the whole experience lacked any sort of vitality or atmosphere. Never mind because we weren’t here for the breakfasts we were here to see the city’s famous Roman ruins, which are some of the best preserved in Europe.

For a couple of weeks I had been suffering from a sore Achilles heel and it was especially bad this morning and that was a bit of a nuisance because there was going to be a lot of walking involved and there was a much see because Extremadura is considered to be the traditional boundary between Moorish and Christian Spain and Mérida itself has previously passed between Christian, Moorish, and even Portuguese control. Because of its rich and varied history it was declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1993.

First of all we walked along a busy main road towards the crimson and saffron Plaza de Torres and near here was our first excavation to visit. We bought an all sites pass for €12 each which seemed like a good deal and went inside to see the remains of a house that had been the home and office of an important Roman citizen in the first century A.D. and after that we visited an adjacent ancient Roman burial site and cemetery.

It was getting hot as we made our way to one of the main attractions, the amphitheatre and theatre and as we walked we were aware of hundreds of school children arriving in buses, far too many for this to be a normal school trip occasion and we wondered what they were all doing here. We found the entrance to the site and all was revealed because today, and all week, there was a production of the Greco-Latin Youth Festival Theatre which meant that the theatre was in use and access was restricted. I was annoyed about that and wondered just how restricted?

We went first to the amphitheatre which was completed in 8 B.C. and was able to seat up to fifteen thousand spectators within the elliptical stadium. Last month we had visited the amphitheatre at Pula which accommodated twenty-thousand spectators but this seemed just as huge. It wasn’t in such good shape however because a lot of it has been subsequently dismantled for alternative building projects.

Mérida was the capital city of the most westerly Roman Province of Lusitania so this was an important place and the amphitheatre here would have been on the main gladiatorial and events circuit of the Empire and it continued to be used for this purpose until the fourth century. Today, on account of its past, Mérida is a sister city of Rome.

The site was beginning to fill up now with the school children and the volume levels inside the Roman Theatre (Teatro Romano) were beginning to build so we left the amphitheatre and walked the short distance to the theatre next door. Two thousand years ago this would have been a massive entertainment centre for the city and today we were going to see it being used for its original purpose. Although we couldn’t get down close to the stage area and the columns and the statues and the central seating area was full of chattering and excitable school children we could make our way around the upper circle and visitors were invited to stay awhile and watch the production. We sat and watched for about half an hour but it was a three hour show and struggling with interpretation we finally left and moved on.

After a drink and the inevitable dish of olives we walked past the amphitheatre house, which was closed but which we could see through the chain link fencing, and then made our way to the Roman Circus which would have been quite a way outside the walls of the Roman city. On the way we called in at a tourist information office and they told us to hurry because it would be closing soon for lunch.

Although we have now visited a number of Roman amphitheatres we had never been to a racetrack before and this place was stunning in its layout and sheer size. There is nothing left of the grandstands because these have all been dismantled and the stone used elsewhere but it was easy to imagine what it might have looked like simply by thinking about the Charlton Heston film ‘Ben Hur’ because it was in such a place as this that the Roman chariot races took place. Inside what was the arena it was peaceful and quiet with a carpet of rough grass and wild meadow flowers but with a little imagination it was possible to imagine what a place like this would have been like on race days when there was capacity for thirty-thousand boozed-up cheering spectators!

Leaving the circus we walked along another busy road looking for the site of the aqueducts because although they are not as spectacular or as complete as that of Segovia there are approximately eight kilometres of aqueduct running into and through the city. We found the largest and most complete, the Aqueducto los Milagros in a green park on the edge of the town with each towering arch topped with an untidy nest of twigs and a family of Storks.

We had been walking for four hours now and Kim’s whinge metre was beginning to twitch so this was a good time to find somewhere for lunch. It proved surprisingly difficult to find something suitable and one thing that Mérida did seem to lack was a good selection of street cafés and bars. The ones we liked were full and those that weren’t didn’t tempt us. Eventually, after we had passed underneath Trajan’s Arch on the way back to the centre we came across a place in a side alley off the main shopping street where, partly our own fault it has to be said, although we had a nice salad, we paid a hefty price for it and then sulked for half an hour or so afterwards. It seemed that we had paid the full price for a menu of the day even though we hadn’t chosen or eaten all of the courses. A lesson learned!



Spain, The Alcázar of Segovia

From the square we walked towards the centre of the old city into the sociable main square, the Plaza Mayor, and followed a street adjacent to the cathedral and walked in the direction of the Alcázar, which is the most visited castle in all of 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. It has a rather modern appearance because 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 in California and Disneyworld in Florida but there is no real evidence for this and 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 slightly possible that the Alcázar in Segovia may also have been an important influence as well.

The last time we visited Segovia in March 2009 there were brilliant blue skies and excellent weather but this morning it was rather cold and miserable and this matched exactly how Christine was feeling so on this occasion we didn’t go inside but instead made do with an external viewing and then walked back to the Plaza Mayor by a different route that took us close to the northern walls of the old walled city with some glorious views stretching out over the plains of Castilla y Leon.

In the main square we looked for somewhere to sit and have a drink but it was really too unpleasant to sit outside so we went to the bar in the Sercotel Infanta Isabel where we were glad to sit down in the warm. Micky, Sue and Kim had a coffee and I had a beer which meant the inevitable tapas but Christine was feeling even worse than before as the effect of the alcohol stubbornly refuse to wear off and it was clear that she was unlikely to make a quick recovery and so the best thing to do was to return to Ávila where she could suffer quietly in the comfort of her room.

While we sat there local people came and went and 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.

After the drink stop we returned to the aqueduct where the dancing had stopped now and we collected the car and drove back to Ávila. It was overcast but dry but as we approached the city we could see a towering wall of black cloud building up directly in front of us and just a few kilometres out of the city the rain started to fall and we all knew that it was set in for the rest of the day.

Yesterday when we walked through the Puerta de Santa Teresa we had the afternoon sun on our backs but today there was just a steady pitter patter of rain on our umbrellas so we walked quickly through the sodden streets back to the hotel where Christine went immediately to her room and that was the last that we saw of her all day.

Spain, El Escorial

El Escorial was bigger than I imagined it would be and when we arrived we had to drive around for a while looking for a car park until we eventually found one quite close to the Monastery. It was early afternoon and everyone was quite hungry so instead of going immediately to the tourist sites we looked for somewhere to eat instead. We found a little café bar with a terrace overlooking the Palace and sat outside and ordered beer and snacks and sat for a while and enjoyed the sunshine.

The Palace at El Escorial was built by King Philip II, who, reacting to the Protestant Reformation sweeping through Europe during the sixteenth century, devoted much of his lengthy forty-two reign and much of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of New World gold to stemming the Protestant tide. He ran his Spanish seaborne Empire which stretched from the Netherlands and southern Italy to North Africa, Latin America and the Philippines from his complex at El Escorial which was designed as a monument to Spain’s role as a centre of the Catholic Christian world.

Since then, El Escorial has been the burial site for most of the Bourbon and Hapsburg Spanish kings of the last five centuries and the Royal Pantheon contains the tombs of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (who ruled Spain as King Charles I), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II, Louis I, Charles III, Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, Isabella II, Alfonso XII, and Alfonso XIII. In 1984, UNESCO declared The Royal Site of San Lorenzo of El Escorial a World Heritage Site and more than half a million visitors come here every year to visit the place.

On every visit to Spain I seem to be visiting a World Heritage Site so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that I have been to sixteen and that is over a third of them. In 2005 I visited Barcelona and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi. Then in 2008 I saw the historic centre of Córdoba, the caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the old town of Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral, and Alcázar in Seville. In 2009 on the motoring holiday around Castilian cities I visited Segovia and its Aqueduct, the hanging houses of Cuenca, the historic city of Toledo and the old walled city of Ávila.

Even before I knew anything about World Heritage Sites it turns out that I have visited two more in the days of my beach type holidays, although when I went to these places neither of them were yet on the list. In 1988 I holidayed on the island of Ibiza which was accepted onto the list in 1999 in recognition of its biodiversity and culture and in the following year I went to Tenerife and took a cable car ride to the top of Mount Tiede, a national park that was accepted to the list in 2007. I have also visited Benidorm but for some reason that hasn’t yet made the list.

Even though they weren’t World Heritage Sites at the time I visited them I am still going to count them but the final two might be a bit dubious but anyway here goes. In 1984 while driving back through Spain from Portugal I drove with friends through the city of Burgos which was accepted in that year because of its Cathedral, and in Galicia in 2008 while visiting Santiago de Compostela I managed to drive over parts of the Pilgrim Route, which exists on the list separately from the old city itself.

After our late lunch we made our way to the complex of El Escorial which has been described as ‘the oppressive monument of the first totalitarian state in Europe’ and ‘the mausoleum of Spanish power’ and although the expansive courtyard was bathed in afternoon sunshine the grey building did indeed appear cold, vast and imposing and it was easy to see how this dull monolithic exterior came to represent Castilian military virility and the expression of religious might and it certainly wasn’t as handsome as the other Royal Palaces that we have visited at San Ildefonso, Madrid and Arunjuez.

It was too late to visit the interior so we made do with a walk around the outside and a peek into the precisely manicured gardens at the rear. It wasn’t too busy today but on the way out a Spanish man began a conversation with us in perfect English but with a distinctly Teutonic accent. He told us he was a solicitor and originally from Bilbao so I suppose that makes him a Basque rather than a Spaniard but he told us he lived in El Escorial now and he gave us some sightseeing suggestions for our short stay.

Spain, The Search Continues

Since early 2009, as part of our own Grand Tour of Europe, we have been drawn time and again to the Iberian Peninsula in search of the real Spain and in November 2010 we returned once more, flying to Madrid and planning a short three night stay in the city of Ávila about one hundred kilometres north west of the capital city.

Spain was not, generally, part of the traditional European Grand Tour and until the twentieth century only caught the attention of the braver or more rugged of travellers and writers. For many it was too primitive, too mountainous and just too dangerous, prone to violent upheavals, inhospitable weather and without acceptable restaurants or decent amenities. ‘To travel in Spain you need three francs a day and a gun’ said one Frenchman who accompanied Alexander Dumas on a mid nineteenth century trip to the peninsular. For the sons and daughters of the English Aristocracy Spain did not have the sophisticated allure of France, the Renaissance treasures of Italy or even the ancient charm of Greece and very few people ever considered crossing the Pyrenees into a land perceived to be full of fanatical Jesuit priests and lurid tales of bandits and cut-throats.



What a pity because, as I have now discovered over the past two years, they were passing up on the opportunities of marvelling at Baroque Seville, the Hanging Houses of Cuenca, the walled fortresses of Ávila and Ciudad Rodrigo, the historic cities of Toledo and Salamanca, the numerous Royal Palaces that surround Madrid and the rich heritage of Roman and Moorish Spain with the largest remaining Roman aqueduct at Segovia and what was once the second largest Mosque in the World at Cordoba.

Right up until the 1950s Spain was considered to be a place for the courageous because it was different and mysterious with a hostile geography, haughty aristocratic grandees and destitute peasants, Romany gypsies and blood thirsty customs. Travellers and visitors were often inclined not to regard it as part of Europe at all and it was often considered, on account of its Moorish heritage, dark skinned people and unfamiliar customs, as part of Africa or of the east. The Spanish themselves understood this perception of their peninsular and in the 1960s “Spain is different“ used to be the slogan of Spain’s international tourism campaign.

Sadly, even today, for many, Spain means only a fortnight’s karaoke holiday spread out on the golden sands of the Costas with a bottle of sun cream and a jug of sangria without any real attempt to understand the geography, the history or the culture of the country. But for those with imagination and an appetite for an experience of real Spain then the airports of Valladolid, Seville, Santander and Madrid are the places to begin a quest to find the Spain of the shrines, the Spain of the Knights-errant, the Spain of the Mosques, castles and mighty cathedrals as well as the Spain of the real castanet clicking flamenco dancers, Spanish guitars and matadors and bull fights as opposed to the ersatz versions of the holiday resorts.

The Easyjet plane flew over the Spanish coast at Santander and we could see the snow capped Picos de Europa Mountains soaring majestically through the low cloud which then immediately closed in and smothered northern Spain and Castilla y Leon completely. The land was completely obscured from view breaking only over the peaks of the Sierra Guadarrama and briefly revealing mountain towns and villages, rivers and shimmering blue reservoirs. A few minutes later around mid morning we landed in a misty Madrid where the temperature was struggling to reach double figures and after the formalities of border control went straight to the Sixt car rental desk.

Since my complaint about Sixt and winter tyre charges in Germany earlier this year I have been in regular correspondence with the Company Customer Services Manager for the UK and this led to the issue of a Sixt platinum account which gives me certain privileges such as discounted prices, speedy pick up service and on this occasion an upgrade from a Volkswagen to a BMW and we were delighted when we took possession of a shiny white 1 series, left the airport and pointed it in the direction of the mountains and the sunshine.

Marrakech, Berbers, Argan Oil and a Rope Bridge

We drove on and the road started to follow the river now which wasn’t deep but it was wide and quite fast flowing. The silver water dashed between gullies and rushed over rocks and every so often there were local women doing their weekly washing in the water and stretching it out over boulders to dry in the sun in the way that they have always done. Further on the river dropped in between steep banks and the only way to cross was by using rope bridges with wooden slats that didn’t look awfully permanent. There were cafés now on either side of the river with plastic tables and chairs out in the open air and close to the water so we assumed we were getting close to our destination.

Hassan stopped the car again and our next stop on the itinerary was to visit a traditional Berber house. The Berbers are a unique ethnic group who live in North Africa, the oldest settlers in the region and quite different from the Arabs of Marrakech and the rest of Morocco. Squeezed in between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Sahara Desert to the south the Berber communities have developed and thrived in the Atlas Mountains and now we were invited to take a look inside a real Berber house.

It wasn’t a real house of course, it was a sort of living museum and women in traditional costume were preparing food in a small corner of a ramshackle arrangement of higgledy- piggeldy rooms that Hassan showed us through and explained the traditional domestic arrangements as we went. Next to the house was a shop of course and outside were the hopeful peddlers of necklaces and bracelets who implored us to buy as we left.

Opposite the house there was a small building where a women’s cooperative was producing argan oil. Argan oil is valued for its nutritive, cosmetic and numerous medicinal properties but is one of the rarest oils in the world due the small and very specific growing areas because it is produced from the kernels of the argan tree which are only found in Morocco.

In the past Berber women would extract the undigested pits of the argan fruit from goat excrement on the ground because the animals are very fond of the fruit and will even climb the trees to reach it but that isn’t terribly hygienic of course and I think they have stopped doing it that way now. All argan sold today is produced by the women’s cooperative that shares the profits among the local women and under the supervision of UNESCO has established an ecosystem reforestation project so that the supply of argan oil will not run out.

Mike was sceptical about whether this was authentic or simply a set-up for the tourists but inside the building women were sitting on the floor with rough rectangular stones between their knees cracking pits with rounded rocks. We learned that each smooth pit contains one to three kernels, which look like sliced almonds and are rich in oil. The kernels are then removed and gently roasted and this accounts for part of the distinctive, nutty flavour of the oil. It takes several days and about thirty kilograms of fruit, roughly one season’s produce from a single tree, to make only one litre of the precious liquid. The cosmetic oil, rich in vitamin E and essential fatty acids, is used for massage, facials and as a magic ingredient in anti-aging cream.

Naturally there was a shop attached and after the lesson we were invited to look around and try some samples. Actually it really was rather good but also terribly expensive so once again we waited for a crowd of people to arrive and slipped out under cover and away from the hard sell routine. We were getting good at that.

Hassan drove on and still we were climbing and following the river on our left and the boundary of the Parc National de Toubkal to our right, which includes the highest mountain in Morocco, Jbel Toubkal. After a while Hassan stopped the car and for no apparent reason invited us to take a walk across a precarious looking rope bridge to the other side of the river. We understood why when a local Berber man in a check kaftan and bright blue skull cap appeared from the side of the road and it seemed to be his self appointed job to usher people over to the other side, have his photograph taken with terrified tourists and charge a few dirham for the privilege.

I say terrified because to cross this swaying, rotting foot bridge required Indiana Jones type nerves of steel. Some of the planks of wood were missing and the steel rope that held it all together was rusty and corroded. With two or three people on it at the same time it rocked and lurched from side to side and below us was a drop of about twenty metres to the fast flowing river strewn with sharp rocks and jagged boulders which would have guaranteed an unpleasant landing and maybe a night or two in a hospital bed if the whole thing had come crashing down.

Greece 2010, Rhodes Town and an Unexpected Dinner Invitation

We enjoyed three days staying in the city and made a couple of other visits as well, the harbour was bustling with activity and although we didn’t especially like the new town the old town was spectacular with a castle and city walls, old churches and an abundance of historical sites. We explored the back streets and the ruins, some of which were the result of British bombing in 1944 which made us feel guilty.

On the first morning we woke early and went to the Street of the Knights because this is one of the best preserved/restored medieval streets in Europe and we wanted to get there before the crowds. As soon as the cruise ships arrive and discharge their guests onto the quayside hundreds of people make straight for this place and it immediately loses its atmosphere and its charm. At eight o’clock in the morning however there was no one about except the odd delivery man and it was possible to soak up the medieval ambiance of the place.

All of this medieval history is here on Rhodes because in 1309 the Island was occupied by forces of the Knights Hospitaller and under the rule of the newly named ‘Knights of Rhodes’ the city was rebuilt into a model of the European medieval ideal. Many of the city’s famous monuments, including the Palace of the Grand Master, were built during this period. The citadel of Rhodes, built by the Hospitalliers, is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe, which in 1988 was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Gradually however the strong walls which the Knights had built came under siege and withstood the attacks of the Sultan of Egypt in 1444, and of Mehmed II in 1480. Ultimately, however, Rhodes fell to the large army of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522 and the surviving Knights were permitted to retire to the Kingdom of Sicily before later moving their base of operations to the strategically placed island of Malta. The Knights had ruled the island for two hundred years but Rhodes was thereafter a possession of the Ottoman Empire for nearly four centuries and during this time the city acquired a characteristic eastern and Turkish culture and style.

In the nineteenth century the decline of the Ottoman Empire resulted in the general neglect of the town and its buildings, which further deteriorated due to strong earthquakes and in 1912, Italy seized Rhodes from the Turks. Under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, the island, together with the Dodecanese, was officially assigned to Italy.

The Italians would later demolish the houses that were built on and around the city walls during the Ottoman era. They also turned the Jewish and Ottoman cemeteries into a green zone surrounding the Medieval Town and whilst they preserved what was left from the Knights’ period they destroyed all of the Ottoman buildings. During the Second-World-War, following the Italian Armistice of September 8th 1943, the British attempted to get the Italian garrison on Rhodes to change sides but this was anticipated by the German Army, which succeeded in occupying the island. In 1948, together with the other islands of the Dodecanese, Rhodes was united with Greece.

In the morning we visited the City museum which was fascinating but had rather too many old pots to keep my interest for very long and an hour was long enough for both of us so we walked around the harbour and under the city walls around the gardens in what was once the defensive dry moat. We had learnt to say no with some authority by now and dodging the persistent waiters we explored the much quieter Turkish quarter before finding a bar with a shady spot for a lunch time drink.

Later in the afternoon while I sat on the terrace with a book Kim went to a Turkish bath for an exfoliation and a massage but I declined to join her because if truth be known I am quite attached to my dead skin and by this time I was nine days into a self cleansing experiment and a good scrubbing would have ruined it.

In the early evening we sat chatting to some people, a New Yorker and a young woman from Lichtenstein who worked together in Luxembourg as investment bankers and a student from Bosnia who studied at the University there. They were young show-offs really and I couldn’t help wondering why they weren’t at work sorting out the banking crisis that people like them at created rather than sitting around on holiday in Rhodes sailing and scuba diving but chatting to them turned to our advantage when we received an unexpected dinner invitation.

The room owners Sofia and Phillip were cooking for them and as they prepared the tables they invited us to join them for a home prepared meal of dolmades and possibly the best beef stifado we have ever tasted. We had an excellent meal and swapped increasingly boastful travel stories and Sofia told us all about Greek cuisine. We have the recipe for the stifado but we are pessimistically certain that it will take some recreating to achieve that authentic taste.

Montenegro, Kotor

At 35º centigrade it was extremely hot and Kim was full of complaints about the heat and the humidity and after we had walked through a slightly smelly street vegetable market that was sweltering in the sun we were pleased to go through the main gate of the old town and into the shaded cooler streets inside, Kim because she was out of the sun and me because she had stopped complaining.

It was busy inside because Kotor old town is quite small with a population of about five and a half thousand and it was playing host to the holidaymakers from the cruise liner and hundreds of others as well which temporarily more than doubled the population. Once again there was a distinct Italianate feel because the old Mediterranean port of Kotor is surrounded by an impressive city wall that was built by Republic of Venice and the Venetian influence remains dominant among the architectural styles around the main squares and up and down the tight twisting streets.

Kotor is a UNESCO World Heritage site and inside the walls the narrow sinuous streets took us past little picturesque shops, cafés, bars, antique monuments and cream stone buildings, balconies overflowing with flowers, washing lines full of immaculate laundry and the overwhelming smell of washing powder and fabric conditioner.

The old town of Kotor is wedged in between the rugged Bay and at the foot of the Lovćen massif mountain range directly under overhanging limestone cliffs of the mountains Orjen and Lovćen. At the back of the town there was an entrance to a demanding walk up the vertical mountain to visit the city walls but today it was too hot for us to even think about tackling it especially in flimsy sandals on slippy stones and paths with warnings of danger clearly signposted so we made do with admiring it all from sea level and then slipped back into the maze of streets and looked for a bar away from the blistering heat of the unrelenting sun which was reflecting off the buildings and bouncing about the paved squares and open spaces.

Kotor wasn’t quite what we were expecting it has to be said and Kim found it dirty and scruffy but I would describe it as no worse than untidy, the cruise ship spoilt it in a way because the old town was overcrowded and the hulking mass of the ship destroyed the charm of the seafront and the harbour. The cafés and bars were more expensive than I imagined they would be, certainly pricier than Croatia, but I thought the old town was nice enough and we sat in the shade in a corner of one of the small squares and had a beer before leaving.

We drove back the way that we had come around the Bay of Kotor, which is one of the most indented parts of the Adriatic Sea and, although technically it is actually a submerged river canyon, is sometimes called the southern-most fjord in Europe. By now it was late afternoon and the high cloud that was trapping in the heat and raising the humidity levels was beginning to clear and the water sparkled like parchment as the sky turned to a vibrant blue so we thought we might stop again in Perast and if all the coach tours had gone take the boat ride across to the islands.

One is called St. George island, and the other called Gospa od Škrpjela (Our Lady of the Rock), and each of them has a picturesque chapel. Gospa od Škrpjela is the only artificially built island in the Adriatic, with an area of three thousand square metres it was built upon a rock after two venetian sailors from Perast allegedly found a picture of the Virgin Mary on it in 1452.

A young man, who turned out to be from Sarajevo in Bosnia but studying in London and at home for the summer to make some money, offered us a ride across so we ignored the official tourist boats and accepted. He fired up the outboard engine and then we began the short crossing. About half way across the engine spluttered and cut out and for a few moments were completely becalmed as he fiddled with the fuel supply and grumbled about poor quality petrol (I made a mental note not to fill the car up in Montenegro) and it looked as though we would have to row the final part of the journey but he told us not to worry and after a few seconds he fired the engine back into life and we completed the journey.

We stayed on the island for half an hour but that was plenty long enough to see everything there was to see and when our transport returned he took us back to the mainland this time without incident. As we hopped off the boat he asked for €3 each and I thought this was fair and on the basis that the official boats charged 5 I gave him 4 and that made him smile,

It was still hot so while Kim cooled her feet off in the sea I went looking for a shop for alcohol supplies and when we had both finished our tasks at the end of a long day we agreed with each other that we liked Perast more than Kotor and then returned to the car and drove back around the Bay and returned to Kamaria and the hotel. The balcony which had been too hot earlier in the day when we had first arrived was comfortable now so we sat and watched the boats on the water and drank the Montenegrin beer called Niksicko, which despite its unpromising name was really rather nice.

Croatia, Dubrovnik

The water taxi took about thirty minutes to make the short journey from Mlini to Dubrovnik and even though large cruisers anchored up outside the harbour spoiled the approach the old town fortifications looked spectacular as we sailed into the harbour and once off the boat we transported into an alternative world of narrow medieval streets, magnificent buildings constructed of white Dalmatian stone and a riot of red tiled roofs. We knew that we had all day to explore the city but we were impatient so purchased our tickets and climbed to the top of the walls for the two-kilometre walk around the magnificent tenth century guard’s walkway.

It was extremely hot and It took a couple of hours to complete the walk around the city stopping frequently to admire the breathtaking views of the cathedrals and churches, the battlement and towers and the busy streets bustling with activity at the base of the walls and through the city to the other side. The route took us first alongside the Adriatic and then at the Fort of St John into the old city port past fishing boats, yachts, pleasure craft and water taxis all floating gently on the placid sea within the protective walls of the harbour’s medieval defences. Then we were on the land side where there were there were the best views of the tiled roofs and on to the highest point at the Minceta Tower where there was a steep climb rewarded with an expansive panorama of the city and the vivid blue sea behind it.

The medieval city of Dubrovnik was founded in late antiquity and grew first under Byzantine and then later under Venetian rule before becoming an independent republic in 1358. It developed into a maritime and trading power that rivaled the Venetian Republic and reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It even managed to keep its political independence under Ottoman rule, which began in 1526 but it was sacked in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, and lost its status as a city-state two years later. It came under French rule and was ceded to Austria in 1815. A century later, it became part of Yugoslavia.

When we had completed the circumnavigation of the walls we returned to street level and walked first along the polished white paving stones of the main street occasionally taking detours into intriguing little side streets and alleys. We admired the reconstructed Rector’s House and the Cathedral, wandered through a street market and then to some of the quieter little streets underneath the walls for a different perspective. The old city dates from the thirteenth century, when the imposing fortifications began to be built and the elegance and charm of the historic centre is a perfect blend of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Not surprisingly the place had an Italianate feel with pizzerias and waiters pestering for business in that unique Italian sort of way but we didn’t mind this and just politely said no thank you in an English sort of way and walked on.

By the time we had walked underneath the walls of St John’s Tower and into the old harbour I was beginning to understand why in 1929 George Bernard Shaw described Dubrovnik as ‘Paradise on Earth’ and thankfully the post war reconstruction has restored the old town to its former splendour.

At the beginning of the bombardment, the city was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger and quickly after it was over UNESCO launched an action plan to save Dubrovnik and the reconstruction work began. To rebuild the roofs the original sixteenth century rafters had to be strengthened and almost half a million tiles had to be replaced. The original tiles had been made in the village of Kupari, about fifteen kilometres from the city, and dated from the time of the Dubrovnik republic but the workshops had closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and specialists faced the task of finding a kind of tile which could as far as possible be made using the original materials and methods of construction. Eventually French and Croatian specialists managed to recreate the original technique and the famous roofline was perfectly restored.

The cost of the restoration was estimated at $20 for the old city within the walls and $30 million for the urban area as a whole. Much of the funding came from the new Croatian government and the Dubrovnik Reconstruction Office but also with aid from private Croatian sources and from UNESCO itself. Croatian and international teams of architects, sculptors, restorers and other experts managed to complete the bulk of the work within seven years and in December 1998 Dubrovnik was taken off of the danger list.

It was midday and hot so we returned to a waterside bar that we had used the previous year and thought about lunch. Last year we seriously over ordered here and ended up sending food back so this year we were mindful of that and ordered accordingly – just one plate of small fish and a salad. We were in a perfect spot next to the girls trying to sell thirty minute tours on glass bottomed boats and watching the guided tour parties trying to make decisions about who was going on and who wasn’t. Eventually we tired of watching the people parading back and forth, left the harbour and went back into the city.

It was now almost unbearably hot and Kim had acquired a headache but we had seen mostly everything we wanted to see in Dubrovnik so we walked to the bus stop, I bought the wrong tickets in a shop, and then waited in the shade for the Mlini bus for the fifteen minute ride back along an elevated road with great views over the city, the harbour and the sea.

Krakow, The Old Town and Castle

After lunch and with the sunshine getting the upper hand over the clouds we walked around the square and past the grand St Mary’s Church which has a tower where on the hour a bugle call sounds out. We weren’t sure if there was a real bugler at the top providing the music or whether it was just a recording but there is a legend connected with this tune, which ends unexpectedly in the middle. The story says that it was played by a guard during the Tatars’ invasion in the thirteenth century, who used it to warn citizens of an attack. He was shot in mid tune and since that day the melody breaks off just at the moment he died and then starts again a few seconds later when someone else picked up his bugle and carried on in his place.

Suffering invasion hasn’t been unusual for Poland, which has had an unlucky history of entertaining uninvited guests. This is especially true of the last two hundred years because it has had the misfortune to sit between the two super powers of Germany in the west and Russia in the east, both bursting with testosterone and taking it in turns to beat the crap out of their unfortunate neighbour and the legacy of all of this aggression is quite plain to see.

Before this, the sixteenth century was Krakow’s golden age when it became established as a European centre of science, culture and the arts. This didn’t last long however and in the seventeenth century there was a return to troubled times and after being invaded in turn by Russia, Prussia, Austria, Transylvania, Sweden, and France, it went through a phase of various forms of political control. These included being part of the Duchy of Warsaw, established by Napoleon, and becoming an ‘independent city’. However, for most of this time it fell under the sphere of influence of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, in the province of Galicia.

During the First World War, Józef Pilsudski set out to liberate Poland and the Treaty of Versailles established an independent sovereign Polish state for the first time in more than a hundred years. This only lasted until the Second World War, when Germany and the USSR partitioned the country, with German forces entering Krakow in September 1939. This was catastrophic for the city and during this time many academics were imprisoned and killed and historic relics and monuments were destroyed or looted although fortunately, because the Germans found it rather to their liking, the city itself escaped total destruction.



Krakow is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of course and we walked around the square and then through the University gardens towards the Royal Castle at Wawel Hill and then climbed the steep path to the main gate and went inside. We didn’t visit the state rooms or the museum on this occasion but we enjoyed the magnificent external views from within the courtyard and from outside the main castle walls and after that we walked around the outside of the Cathedral next door which is an interesting structure with a potpourri of architectural styles all belonging to different periods as towers, domes and statues as well as building extensions had been added randomly over the years.

From the top of the walls of the castle we could see the River Vistula looping its way around the city and providing a sort of protective cradle around the west and south. This is the longest and one of the most important rivers in Poland at a little over a thousand kilometres in length, the eleventh longest in Europe, it has it’s source in the Carpathian Mountains and then continues to flow over the vast Polish plains passing through several large cities along its way before finally draining into the Baltic Sea in the north.

From the castle we walked back to the busy intersection where more trams were clattering past and then we followed the road out of the city centre back to Kazimierz through pot holed streets and abandoned buildings all screaming out for renovation and repair. This place felt poor, the shops looked grateful for customers and the whole area had an authentic eastern 1960s European feel about it. I am not sure why that should be because Poland receives millions of Euros in European Union subsidy so I couldn’t help but wonder what they must spend it all on.

In the EU budget for 2007-11 it turns out that Poland receives a net benefit of sixty-five billion euros and that is the largest subsidy of all. To put that into some sort of perspective Greece is the second largest beneficiary at what seems in comparison a modest twenty-five billion. Poland it seems is doing rather nicely out of European Union membership and judging by the pace of improvement I for one am dubious that it is being spent all that wisely. For the record, eighteen out of twenty-seven member countries make a profit out of membership and the United Kingdom of course isn’t one of them because after Germany at eighty-six billion euros the UK makes a whopping contribution of fifty-seven billion. The others that make a loss on membership are France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland and, this is a surprise (well, it was to me), Cyprus.

After a drink at a pavement café where the girls wrapped themselves in blankets as the sun slipped away for the day we made our way back to the Crocodile, had a final drink of the afternoon and agreed that we should return to the Casablanca later so that Sue could have the salmon that she had missed last night. After a quick shower and a change we were (surprise, surprise) back in the Crocodile for pre dinner drinks although I noticed that on this occasion Sue, not wanting to end up in the same state as the previous evening, stuck sensibly to soft drinks.

If last night had been a success (except for Sue getting drunk that is) tonight was a dreadful disappointment. The food was fine, it’s just that an hour and a half is an awful long time to wait to be served. The owner explained that he had kitchen staffing problems but a free shot of a local cocktail and a 10% discount offer for tomorrow night didn’t really compensate, by the time it arrived Sue was too tired to eat the salmon and the rest of us ate our meals and left without leaving a tip. If you are going to eat at the Casablanca I suggest you take a chess set or a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with you to while away the time waiting for the food to be served.

Benidorm, The War of the Bikini

If Pedro Zaragoza Orts is remembered for the Beni-York skyscraper he is even more famous for the so called ‘War of the Bikini’. In the later years of the 1950s the icon of holiday liberty was the saucy two piece swimsuit but in staunchly religious Spain, still held in the firm two-handed grip of church and state, this scanty garment was seen as a threat to the very basis of Catholic society. According to the official version a French engineer called Louis Réard and the fashion designer Jacques Heim invented the swimsuit that was a little more than a provocative brassiere front with a tiny g-string back. It was allegedly named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause on the beach or at the lido would be like a nuclear explosion. Plenty of fallout and very hot!

And it certainly had this effect in Spain and although occasionally allowable on the sandy beaches, it had to be covered up in all other areas; on the promenades and in the plazas and in the shops and the bars and cafés for fear of causing any offence. In one famous incident, a British tourist, sitting in a bar opposite a beach wearing only a bikini, was told by a Guardia Civil officer that she wasn’t allowed to wear it there. After an argument she hit him, and her strike for social justice cost her a hefty fine of forty thousand pesetas. Zaragoza needed tourists and tourists wanted the bikini and with more northern European tourists arriving each year in search of an all over suntan the Mayor knew that the banning of the two piece swimsuit simply couldn’t be sustained or allowed to threaten his ambitious plans.

Zaragoza took a gamble and signed a municipal order which permitted the wearing of the bikini in public areas and in this single act he effectively jump started the Spanish tourist industry. Zaragoza said: “People had to feel free to be able to wear what they wanted, within reason, if it helped them to enjoy themselves as they would come back and tell their friends about the place.” In deeply religious Catholic Spain not everyone was so understanding or welcoming of the bikini however and in retaliation the Archbishop of Valencia began the excommunication process against him.

Excommunication was a serious matter in 1959 and his political supporters began to abandon him so one day he got up early and drove for nine hours on a little Vespa scooter to Madrid to lobby Franco himself. The Generalissimo was suitably impressed with his determination and gave him his support, Zaragoza returned to Benidorm and the Church backed down and the approval of the bikini became a defining moment in the history of modern Spain ultimately changing the course of Spanish tourism and causing a social revolution in an austere country groaning under the yoke of the National Catholic regime. Zaragoza went on to become Franco’s Director of Tourism and a Parliamentary Deputy.

Not many people would have described Franco as a liberalising social reformer and perhaps he just liked to look at ladies breasts but not long after this lots of women on holiday in Benidorm dispensed with the bikini bra altogether and brazenly sunbathed topless and Benidorm postcards had pictures of naked ladies on them to prove it.



One thing I am certain of is that this wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference to my Nan because I am not sure that she ever possessed a swimming costume, never mind a two-piece! She was a bit old-fashioned and the human body in the naked form was only permitted behind closed doors with the curtains closed and preferably after dark. If she ever went in the sea I imagine it would have been in one of those Victorian one piece bathing costumes of the previous century. Grandad too wasn’t one for showing bits of his body normally kept under his bus conductor’s dark blue uniform and didn’t even concede to a pair of shorts, preferring instead to wear his colonial style slacks even during the day. When he came home his impressive suntan stopped at the line of his open neck shirt and his rolled up sleeves.



For people who had never been abroad before Benidorm must have been an exciting place in the early 1960s. Palm fringed boulevards, Sangria by the jug full and, unrestrained by optics, generous measures of whiskey and gin, rum and vodka. Eating outside at a pavement café and ordering drinks and not paying for them until leaving and scattering unfamiliar coins on the table as a tip for the waiter. There was permanent sunshine, a delightful warm sea and unfamiliar food, although actually I seem to doubt that they would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on these holidays because to be fair anything remotely ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people they weren’t really ready for tortilla and gazpacho, tapas or paella. They certainly didn’t return home to experiment with any new Iberian gastronomic ideas and I suspect they probably kept as close as they could to food they were familiar with.

Benidorm is a fascinating place, often unfairly maligned or sneered at but my grandparents liked it and I have been there myself in 1977 for a fortnight’s holiday and then again on a day trip in 2008 just out of curiosity. It has grown into a mature and unique high rise resort with blue flag beaches and an ambition to achieve UNESCO World Heritage Status and I hope it achieves it.

Castilla y Leon

A few weeks after returning from Castilla-la Mancha to the south of Madrid we were returning to Spain and this time to Castilla y Leon to the north of the capital. We had been here in March this year to Ávila and Segovia but this time we were going further north and west, flying in to Valladolid and staying in the small city of Ciudad Rodrigo. We had been looking forward too this because Castilla y Leon is as far away from the coastal strip as it is possible to get and is home to half of Spain’s cultural heritage sites including seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, over two hundred castles and eleven magnificent cathedrals. It is the birthplace of the Spanish language, which after Chinese and Hindi is the third most common language in the World just ahead of English.

We had a late morning flight and the plane took off into a crisp blue sky with scattered clouds over fresh green fields and autumn gold deciduous woods that looked as though they were lying under a generous sprinkling of brown sugar. As we flew south the clouds increased and there was nothing to see until we began to descend toward Valladolid where they began to break into various patchy fragments and below us we could see large colourful fields, russet, grey, cream and yellow broken now and again by bottle green forests, shimmering blue lakes and occasional villages with ochre tiled roofs.

Valladolid airport is only small with limited facilities but there was a sign apologising for this and promising imminent improvements. We collected a steel grey Seat Ibiza from the Avis rental car office and set off immediately on the two hundred-kilometre drive to Ciudad Rodrigo.

There were plenty of things to stop and see along the way but it was mid afternoon and we were in a hurry to get to our destination so we took the Autovia de Castilla and with virtually no traffic to share the road with had an easy journey all of the way. As it was Sunday and we worried about shops being open we stopped as soon as we could at a motorway service station and bought beer, wine and snacks and then carried on. We were crossing the Meseta, the great central plain of interior Spain, which at two hundred and ten thousand square kilometres makes up forty percent of the country and has an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres. It is split in two by the Sistema Central, the Guadarrama and Gredos mountain ranges, creating Old Castile to the north (Castilla y Leon) and New Castile to the south (Castilla La Mancha). The northern 'submeseta' is the higher of the two at over eight hundred metres and coming from below sea level in Lincolnshire I worried that we might require oxygen cylinders.

After about half way we passed by Salamanca and we could see its golden coloured cathedrals standing proud and high above the city and after that the landscape began to change. We left behind the pretty coloured fields and entered a different environment of green fields and woodlands and more and more livestock. After a couple of hours of really enjoyable motoring we came to Ciudad Rodrigo, which is the last city in Spain before reaching Portugal, a fortress city built to protect the western border of the country and as we approached we could see the walled city and its fortifications standing on a rocky outcrop in a commanding defensive position.

I knew roughly where the hotel Molina de Águeda was and as we kept an eye open for directions Kim had another navigational fluke and spotted a half hidden sign that signposted our destination. As we pulled into the car park there were a few spots of rain but it came to nothing and there were blue skies above us as we unloaded the car and went inside to reception. It was a very nice hotel indeed located in an old water mill on the river Agueda, elegantly refurbished and surrounded by woods and we had a good room on the front with a nice view of the river and the old city about a kilometre away.

http://www.hotelmolinodelagueda.com/

We rested for an hour, drank the beer and wine and nibbled on the snacks and then prepared to go out for evening meal. We debated whether to walk or drive and decided that driving was the preferred option so drove into the town and being unfamiliar with the street layout made a couple of attempts at parking before finally stopping and walking through one of the city gates into the old town.

It was a pleasant evening, not cold, but the sort of temperature when local people need to put on a coat, hat and scarf but shirt sleeve weather for those of us from northern Europe with thicker blood. We needn’t have worried about finding somewhere to eat because there was plenty of choice and the place was really busy with families out for a Sunday night on the town. We found a lively tapas bar where everyone was watching the ‘You’ve been framed’ bullfighting show that we had seen last month in Chinchón and the place was really hectic. We were the only overseas visitors in the place but we didn’t feel uncomfortable and we found a table and ordered food. Unfortunately they were so busy that they made a mistake with the order and we only got half of it but it didn’t matter, we weren’t especially hungry anyway and at least it made it a cheaper night out.