Finally Catching Up

Typed 29 May 2014

We are now in Barcelona in a camping and I have decided to catch up with the blog before we get too far ahead of it.  It takes me a long while to get it together.

Picking up in detail now from leaving Granada.

Moorish Gate in Granada

Gate at the Alhambra in Granada

Gardens at the Alhambra in Granada

Street entertainer in Granada

Wendy on an ancient bridge in Granada

Narrow street in the old Moorish quarter of Granada

Whilst in Grenada it was very busy tourist wise, and there are still six weeks to go before the start of the season.  We were thinking that we glad we were not there in full season (July, August), as there are heaps of tourists now, and in the season the numbers would be overwhelming.  Reminded us of when we visited the Vatican mid-season.  It was like being on a conveyor belt, you just had to keep moving as the crowd moved and there was no time to pause and look at anything one thing - just keep going with the flow.  We would recommend to anyone doing a European trip, that, because of the crowds, early May is a good time to do one’s tourist thing, or after August.  The early shoulder is also better than late shoulder as the weather is much more temperate.

When we were approaching Granada we came up gentle rises to the city which was on a broad plain, and we could see behind it large mountains encircling the city.  In the 20km after we left Granada we went UPHILL all the time into the very rugged mountains of the Sierra Nevada range, and then came to a sign saying we were at 1380m (5000ft)  - I think we ascended 10-11% in a kilometre as we were making our way out of the city.  Fiona struggled as we didn’t get any run at it at all - came around a round-about, turned right, and there it was.  Still she got there, and once we got on the autopista she coped very well.

The landscape of Sierra Nevada is very rugged and awe inspiring.  In the heights, the mountains a rocky and craggy, then they become like gigantic sand hills with very mangy vegetation.  Vast alpine plains with snow on the mountains around us (told you it was high) and we passed the biggest solar farm we have ever seen (1mile by 1 mile).  Then wind generators by the hundreds - there are lots of them throughout Spain, but the Sierra Nevadas are a great place to catch wind.  We were grateful for Spain’s investment of EU money in their roads systems, as would not like to have come across this mountain range on lesser roads - we could see remnants of the old road, and it was very frightening to think that once upon a time we would have to have used it!!  Spain may have a big debt, but at least the have the infrastructure to show for it.

Sierra Nevadas between Granada and Almeria

Sierra Nevadas between Granada and Almeria

Sierra Nevadas between Granada and Almeria

Sierra Nevadas between Granada and Almeria

Sierra Nevadas between Granada and Almeria

Crops initially appeared to be apricots.  The soil was not crash hot, but trees look healthy and they run for miles.  Lower down we were back in olive tree country again.  How many millions of gallons of olive oil does this country produce, and how much can the world use??

In some places the trees were used as hedgerows.  When we wound down the windows to take photos, the wind was quite cool because of the height and the snow on the mountains, but it was lovely and sunny.  Lots of strange geographic features, little hills like giant cowpats in the middle of the plains - almost each one with its own castle on top and a little village around the base.  There were hills that looked like giant piles of overburden from some obscure mining venture, but we could see no mining to explain it, so have assumed tht these are natural features - strange.

Coming down nearly to Almeria on the coast, we were gobsmacked to see what looked liked God’s sandpit that had been rained on.  Truly awful terrain.  But there was, surprisingly some tiny green patches of cultivation.  We are amazed how they can do it because they are in the gulches between these gravelly hills were there does not appear to be any water or soil.  Further down the range we started to see greenhouses - metal frames with plastic over - that are probably the size of a football field.  Not one or two, but hundreds of them extending for miles and miles.   We couldn’t really see, but think it is probably fruit growing, although we have since seen everything from oranges, to tomatoes, beans and sundry other fruit and vegetables growing in these greenhouses.  From this point on, we have seen this greenhouse type of agriculture where ever we go.  Still no sign of the water needed, but we have been told that they irrigate from the underground aquifers.  We are in awe of the industry and effort that must be required to cultivate ANYTHING in these depressing conditions.  We have also seen some amazing irrigation systems - particularly in the rice-growing areas.

Back on the coast, we came from the awful sand hills, over some amazing bridges that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, around a corner and into Almeria.  As mentioned before, it was at this point that the GPS (Mongrel) gave us a bad time.  When setting up the GPS for travel, one has to tell it which town, which street, and what number in that street we want to go to.  Because, of course, we have no idea of what street is what in any of these places, I just tell it to take us to the centre of town.  We usually use our discretion about whether we will or will not go where she tells us, but in Almeria we must have had a mind freeze.  Trundling along the main road, she says turn left - we do.  She says go through the round-about and up this tiny little street - we do - bad move.  Next thing you know we (well Kenny) is trying to manoeuvre our whacking great van through the maze of tiny streets to get us out again without hitting overhanging trees in the lovely little squares (who cares about their squares) or the little cars who have unwisely parked in aforementioned tiny streets or the buildings that have been unwisely designed to stick out into those same streets.  Meanwhile I am stressing out and moaning and crying and Kenny is yelling at me to shut up.   Eventually my hero gets us out of there and we find a place to get bread.  We stopped for lunch in the car park of the sports stadium where it became apparent that we had missed (yet another) market, as the stall holders were packing up as we arrived.  This has happened to us on more than one occasion on this trip - Kenny is grateful though, because he reckons that I have bought something at every market we have stopped at - isn’t that what markets are for?  I must admit that on this trip I have bought more stuff to take home than I ever have before - not sure where it is going to fit into the bags, will have o leave clothes behind and replace them when I get home J.

After lunch continued on to Vera, reasonable sized, nice but unremarkable country town.  Spent the night parked in the street neat a taberna.  It was very warm  GPS took us on a nerve-wracking, round-country tour to get out of the place before we finally got back to the autopista.  Main crop in that area appears to be olives - isn’t it everywhere? And again the landscape is stark and striking.

Kenny is getting annoyed that I keep detailing the landscape, soil and crops as we pass, but I think my country-based family will be interested.  I find it interesting anyhow.  And I know that Mum would love Spain as she has been a keen student of geology all her life.  There are so many different and interesting types of terrain here.

Next stop Cartgena (Kenny wants me to tell you that this is where Hannibal came from - Carthage - but I want to know where he got his elephants from).

We trudged through the old town and after a lot of ducking a weaving to find it, we checked out the remains of a Roman amphitheatre.  A major restoration is underway and it was truly lovely.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get INTO it, but we did get some great photos from above.  Another highlight of Cartagena (for Kenny) was the Museum of Artillery - it was verrrry interesting.

Roman Amphitheatre in Cartagena

Thence toward Alicante.  The plan was to go to the beach and there was a strong wind warning out - again.  As we followed the coast we could see the small inland sea enclosed by either a natural ribbon of land or a man-made dyke (on which there were hotels/apartment blocks) and the water was really rough.  Would not have liked to be on the open sea of the Mediterranean that day, as I think it would have been considerably rougher.  We were heading for the seaside town of La Marina, just short of Alicante, where we stayed for two nights in a small but clean camping park in an area of quiet commercial buildings - many of them obviously abandoned mid-construction.  Day one was blowing a gale, but day two the wind had settled.  Despite our expectations we never saw the beach from our camping.

We caught the bus into Alicante and when we arrived at the Estation des Autobuses we were singularly unimpressed - is this all there is?  But we bumped into an English couple who live in Alicante and they told us to walk to the end of the central avenue and turn left.   We did this and it took us into the streets of the old town, but we could not find the tourist information centre - Kenny always insists on it and we usually spend half our time looking for it only to find we have already seen everything they have to tell us about. 

Castelo of Santa Barbara in Alicante

We glanced up at one point a spied the enormous walled castle on top of the crag in the middle of the city.  The Castello de Santa Barbara. it was in magnificent repair and certainly worth a look, but we didn’t think our old legs, lungs, hearts, etc. would get us up that hill.  Fortunately the city has installed a lift inside the hill and over 65s get to ride for free.  We figured that Kenny had enough years over to get us both the trip, so we told a fib and we both got the free trip.  Well worth it, if only for the view over the city and neighbouring countryside.  AND we go to look down on the bullring that Kenny had been so keen to see (Le Plaza De Toros D’Alicante). 

Wendy on top of the Castelo of Santa Barbara in Alicante

We lunched at one of the little restaurants grabbing a space in a major walkway and spent the day wandering about its old city, enjoying the ambience of a vibrant Spanish city.  Lots of lovely treed squares and the city has a lovely ambience.

Speaking of that restaurant reminds me that often it seems that people set up restaurants in tiny little buildings and then just take over the footpath - sometimes the road as well - to set up their tables and chairs.  We have see instances where the tables and chairs are in the median strip and the waiters have to dare the traffic to wait on the tables.  When we were in Segovia we stopped for a drink at a place where we could not even locate the actual kitchen/restaurant.  There was a desk with plates, cutlery and glasses, which the waiters used to set tables, and the food appear from some unknown and unseen place.  Not sure how that works with licences and zoning, etc., but it certainly not uncommon.

Kenny in Alicante

From Alicante we travelled north again.  We are doing our travelling along the coast on the Autopista Del Mediterraneo.  The Mediterranean is gorgeous to look at, but is not real warm yet. 

Next port of call was Cullera, a largish tourist town on the beach - think Gold Coast without the nightclubs and tackiness. No road along beachfront, so we drove down a road to the beach and where we found a parking spot and a Spanish motorhome a couple of spaces up.  Kenny did charades with the senora and learned that they had been there 3 days no one cared.  So we decided to stay for a couple of days ourselves.  The Policia Civil (local police) came by and checked on us a few times so we felt very secure.  Along the beachfront was a gorgeous broad promenade that the locals made fabulous use of - people out walking until 9-10 at night in the beautiful balmy weather. 

Our view at Cullera

Because our van doesn’t have a grey water holding tank, we have a bucket we put out to collect our waste water.  We don’t like doing this in non camping places as it seems a bit cheeky, so we held our water in the sink during the day and snuck out to dump our grey water after dark (11pm) - Kenny argues that we watered their plants.  Just following the Australian Caravan and Motorhoming Club motto - Leave No Trace. 

On our second day in Cullera we realised that we had missed the market there as well!!!

Two days in Cullera, then northward to Pinedo.  I chose this as a stop because it was close to Valencia and I thought we would be able to catch a bus into town from there.  However it turned out to be a relatively unattractive town, with few redeeming features because it is the  port for Valencia and quite boring.  Also no bus link and we didn’t want to leave the van in unsecured parking.  We parked overnight in the car park overlooking the canal, next to the school.   We were woken at a relatively early hour by the mums dropping the kids off. 

School seems to run from 8 til 12, then they go home for lunch and siesta, and come back 2-5pm.  If I had school kids here, I would be very annoyed at this system, ‘cos, boy, wouldn’t it interrupt Mum’s day!!! 

Those families who live in houses here, rather than units, do not have lawns, but they all have a garden - front or back - where they grow all sorts of vegetables and fruit - and olives.  I really admire this as I have never been very successful at growing veggies.  Kenneth has dug and planted several veggies gardens over the years, but once planted he forgets all about them and they do not thrive.  Those who live in units, generally have lovely pot plants with geraniums a speciality.  All very colourful.

Stayed night in Pinedo then moved a little backwards to a camping park at Le Saler as our jump-off spot for Valencia.  We stayed there for 2 nights.  In this camp we met up with English, Spanish, Belgian, Danish people and 2 aussie couples.  We had drinkies with one lot of Aussies - Heather and John -  on first night and slept very well thereafter.

Nex day we caught the bus across the road from the camping and went into Valencia and did the Red Bus tours.  These are tours where you buy a 24 ticket to hop on and off a tour bus that has an audio guide in several languages - that’s good, ‘cos some tours we have been on are ONLY in Spanish.  You get a general overview of the city and can then do the bits you like in more detail.  The bit we did in more detail was the Mueso des Beaux Artes where the majority of works were old religious paintings which really don’t appeal to us, but the other side of the building had 4 lovely Goyas and the rest was dedicated to the Spanish artist Sorollo who was a wonderful portraitist and that was lovely.

We really loved this city.  Valencia is a lovely city with wide treed avenues, but no Moorish influences that we could see, which was actually what we were expecting.  There are many lovely architectural buildings including the Cuidad des Artes and Sciences.  This is a fairly recent addition of buildings in one precinct and includes - walk-through aquarium, concert hall, hemisphere (not sure what is in that), and an interactive sciences building all linked, over about five football field lengths, by shallow pond and walkways.  Beautiful and striking architecture which dominates its surroundings.

Because of serious flooding problems, the river was diverted around the city in the 1970s and now the wide river bed is recreation space right though length of the city - a big green belt of gardens with tennis courts, athletics tracks, bike tracks, boulerama and parks and walkways - all crossed by several lovely old bridges - it must have been a very wide river.  This green belt give the city a wonderful free feeling and combined with the tree lined avenues, fountains and sculptures throughout the centre of the city, makes for a fabulous ambience

As we were leaving this lovely city, on the outskirts we spied several new hotels/apartment blocks with castellations and battlements imitating old Spanish style in modern buildings.  Here we saw again, many rice paddies - not really surprising seeing that paella is the national dish, then back to oranges groves up the ying yang.  Saw many places that could have been the hacienda of the Handsome Hero.

Hacienda of the Handsome Hero overlooking rice paddies near Valencia

From Valencia our intended destination was El Muntells further up the coast via Amposta.

Segunto off our road has a lovely huge walled castelo across two hills - we passed it on the road.  It was out of our way, and we not going there.  We have become very blasé about big castle now.  Only rate an “Oh, there is a big castle”.  “Yeah”.

At Amposta we went hunting for a supermarket through the sizeable town of tiny streets.  Found ourselves at the servo on the way out and went in to ask “where is the supermercado”?.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  A Senor who was filling up said “Lidl”?  I said “Si”, and he told us to follow him.  We did for some time through a tortuous path of narrow little streets and eventually he took us to the Lidl - not only was there a Lidl (like Aldi), but there were 4 other supermarkets there - why did he pick Lidl?   Is my Spanish accent so bad that he couldn’t understand ‘supermercado’?  Anyway we managed to get our bread and off we went

El Muntells is in the delta of L’Ebre and is a huge flat plain in the shadow of nearby mountains - in Spain it seems we are always in the shadow of mountain (unless we are IN the mountains).  We travelled through miles of rice paddies to get to the Aire next to the school.  It was actually a very boring little spot.  It was advertised as a land of rice paddies and flamingos.  Lots of rice paddies no flamingos.  It rained as we arrived, and then through the night we had severe winds again, which buffeted the van.  The rice paddies are dug down about 30cms to make the water pools for the rice, the occasional house is then left on its own little island - quite quaint.  The rice is just shooting and the fields are very green.  When we woke up this morning we noticed the big line of wind generators up on the hills - couldn’t see them when we came in as the hills were covered in rain clouds - but that obviously explains the wind.

We planned on going from El Muntells to a nude camp a little further north, but the weather is not conducive to sunbathing, so decided to push on to Barcelona where we arrived around 12.30pm.

Musings from the tablet:

There are lots of poms here:  One couple we met on the bus in Valenica live near Alicante, and have done for 10 years.  There are 1200 other poms in their village.  Tends to detract from the Spanish-ness of it.  And they don’t even speak Spanish after living here for 10 years!!!

 

Peage (road tolls):  In Portugal we had to put in our credit card when we first crossed the border.  Here there are several different ways: 1. pay when you get on, 2. take a ticket and then pay money for ticket. 3. Other I can’t remember, but you never know till you get to the peage point what the system is going to be - drives Kenny crazy.  Tolls very reasonable particularly in light of the fact that the roads are so great. €14 is the highest we have had to pay and that was for the 200 kms coming down from Granada.  We were happy to pay it, as the alternative of travelling on the old roads is horrible.  Generally we are paying €4-5 for long legs of motorway.

We are now in a camping park at Barcelona and will catch the bus into town tomorrow - Kenny says “bright and early” - bugger!.  This is our last big city.  Now aiming for smaller places to pick up the local vibe.

That’s it for now.  Will post more photos next time as I haven’t had time to download and relabel the latest ones yet.

Keep well till next time.  (Blame any typos on the long fingernails which I am having trouble with (I hear you say "Cut them", but it is not that simple).