Round and about in the Costa de la Luz

Olvera to Conil, de la Frontera, 113 Miles, Camping Rosaleda, €17 per night. 2 nights

Where next? This was the vexed question posed by the crowded car park of Puerto Serrano's disused station. Clearly the gentler section of the via verde hereabouts was a popular holiday weekend activity with Spanish families. No way were we going to be able able to squeeze the van into any of the available parking slots. We discussed options. Head west towards Cadiz and the section of the Costa de la Luz next to the Portuguese border. The campsite at Isla Cristina was great we agreed. "But we've been there," was my point, ever keen to pursue our aim to 'boldly go'. Using the James T Kirk rule of thumb we decided to head southwards to the beaches of the Costa de la Luz near Barbate and Capo Trafalgar. The last time we visited here we scooted past this section of the coast in hyper-drive when the landscape had been wreathed in mist due to Wunderground's secret Klingon cloaking device.

Even our simple revised plan proved less straightforward than we anticipated. Muriel plotted a route directly south from Arcos de la Frontera through the intruigingly exotic sounding Medina de Sidonia. We never found out if the placed lived up to its 'eastern promise'. We turned off the dual carriageway following the signs, however after less than half a kilometres the road deteriorated into an upgraded donkey track and I reversed gingerly into a factory entrance deciding to about turn and take the main road via Jerez instead. Somewhat longer but a lot less stressful. A bonus was the factory entrance provided a stunning view of Arcos de la Frontera, complete with requisite white buildings and cliff edge setting. Gill took a photo through the windscreen, that was as close as we were going to get.

Where we ended up was at a campsite at Conil de la Frontera. The site was ok and the nearby small resort a pleasant, if traffic choked, place. The white town at its centre was interesting but the huge beach somewhat windswept.

After five weeks of being more or less solitary travellers suddenly there were lots of English voices around us. We were entering the land of the long stay over-wintering Brits complete with safari rooms and fancy awnings draped with fairy lights filling pitches, and a social scene of afternoon drinks with neighbours, a fully functioning temporary suburb in the sun. I can understand the attraction in that if you a sociable person. It's something I have never quite got the hang of.

Not everyone had packed their sun beds to settled down to await the man with the scythe. I had a really interesting conversation at the washing up place with someone who had worked as a teacher in Southeast London. She had the rather remarkable experience of teaching the siblings of Stephen Lawrence then, moving to another school, ended up with the offspring of one of his alleged killers in her class. Her thoughts on the contradictions and challenges of working in such a mixed multi-cultural city and the realities of having to deal with its dark side certainly gave me pause for thought. Life can be so unfair, and when horrible things occur the consequences ripple out far beyond the perpetrators and the victim; lives are changed for the worse simply by association. 

The chat drifted towards more mundane matters, of where we both had been and where we were going next. To Morocco tomorrow for my fellow washer-upper. I asked how she felt. A bit anxious but excited was the reply, explaining that they had booked a hotel stop near Tangier with secure parking and were moving on then to a well established campsite near Agadir reached mainly by motorway. "Then we'll decide how adventurous we want to be," she added with a grin. We wished each other 'bon voyage'. See, I thought to myself as carried the dishes back, I can manage to be conversational sometimes...

Today is Halloween. Our virtual worlds have been full of witches and pumpkin lanterns, but in the real world here in Spain, or at least in Andalucia, Halloween is very low key, and as in France, it's All Saints day on November 1st. which is the big event, involving voluminous pots of chrysanthemums, visits to the family grave, and a big meal out with living relatives. Or least that's what the more traditionally minded do. From our experience in the previous site, it seems younger, more secularly minded Spaniards simply head out for a late autumn break before a winter chill sets in even in Europe's most southerly climes.

Just so we northerners would not feel too Halloween deprived, a coal black cat decided to take-up residence beneath the van. Every so often a plaintive meow would drift up from below. Even for someone like me who regards cats as sentimentalised vermin, I realised as felines go, this one was a bit of a looker, and so beautiful, could easily have modelled for Jan Pieńkowski. Our sense that we were featuring in an episode of Meg and Mog was reinforced by the arrival of Owl, hooting very loudly in the bough of a tree right above our half open heiki skylight. I crept quietly out of the van hoping to see the bird. I did not get a full view, but glimpsed a flash of tawny wings as it settled on one of the higher branches.So, no kids filching sweets, teen zombies heading for fancy dress parties or pumpkin lanterns grinning malevolently from neighbouring windows; instead a sickle moon, a black cat and a visiting owl. Gothic enough for Halloween, so long as you ignore the balmy temperature, a chirping cicada and the adjacent olive grove.

We've been looking at the map. We think we will move a few kilometres tomorrow to site next to Capo Trafalgar,, because 'England expects...'

e

Tricky trails and shooting stars

When we cycled down to Olvera yesterday we locked the  bikes at a small roundabout at the edge of the old town. The road to the town's disused station was signed from it. This was fortuitous as the station is the the starting point for the Via Verde de la Sierra. It also has overnight parking for motorhomes a bit cheaper than the campsite. Our 'All the Aires'' guidebook warned that the access road was steep and narrow and might be difficult for larger vans, so we a look at the route to check it out. The narrow road had a skip and a cement mixer just to add extra hazard and the gradient looked about 15%. We decided to stay put at the campsite for an extra night. After all, we agreed, it was quiet and had a lovely position and at €17 euros was not expensive. 

It is true that the site was almost empty when we had left it, but by the time we arrived back it was filling quickly with Spanish families in caravans - mainly couples in their thirties with pre-schoolers and tweenies in tow. At first we put this down to the forthcoming weekend and the good forecast, but the ebullient atmosphere and excited hubbub seemed exude more of a holiday mood. "I wonder if the Spanish have 'All Saints' as a public holiday, like the French," Gill mused. Our portable oracle soon confirmed that this was indeed the case. I like it when kids are running around the place. We spent years travelling as a family, not so much in Spain, but in Italy and France - and it is heartening to see a new generation of parents enjoying the outdoor life with their children.

When went foff or our cycle ride yesterday we had the place to ourselves, by the time we returned.....

Next day, by mid-morning off we went to cycle the via verde. This proved a little trickier than we anticipated. Gill is prone to vertigo and going downhill on very steep hills on her bike can trigger it. She took one look at the way the road to the station plummeted downwards and felt very nervous about it. We had a plan B. The road north from Olvera seemed to provide alternative access. It was somewhat longer, and down a steep but not vertiginous, descent. When we arrived at the place shown on Google maps as another way to access the via verde it turned out to be a rutted farm track. So, back up the hill we trundled. There seemed to be only one option left. I offered to ride both bikes down to the station and Gill could walk the half kilometre or so to the start of the trail. I was just locking my bike at the bottom of the hill, about to trudge back to bring down Gill's, when she came into view gliding gently down the steep slope having plucked up the courage overcome the dizziness and nausea.

A very steep and narrow access road to the Via Verde

After something of a shaky start, the trail itself was lovely. It is metalled and quite flat. There are many short tunnels, over thirty apparently in so many kilometres. We cycled for an hour perhaps covering a little less than half of its length, of course we had to backtrack the same distance. Add to that the detour down hill at the outset and the six kilometres there and back to the campsite and we probably covered about 25 kilometres. 

Once you get there the cycle trail is brilliant

It runs along the valley below Olvera

Action shot...

Many tunnels - minimal lighting - but most are only about 300 metres.

The trail runs through beautiful olive covered hills

Like yesterday, the weather today has been perfect. In the light of late afternoon the sky became a deep velvet blue, and the most mundane things, a yellow wheelie bin, or flaky ochre painted wall, took on an unearthly glow. 

Sometimes southern light can transform the mundane into the magical

view from the cooking stool..

of the Cadac

grilled pears

Gill brings the accompaniments

Creme fraise and rosemary honey

washed down with a crisp Rias Baixas to counteract the sweetness

bought locally in Galicia - stylish, and about 4 euros - scrumptious and cheap - that's what we like!

Evening faded to twilight silhouetting the Sierras' jagged peaks; above, in the inky blue, stars appeared one by one. Gill has downloaded a great app called Skymap. Merely by pointing your phone at the night sky it gives the position of all the stars for your location, date and time. So the two bright objects low on the horizon to west turned out to be Mars and Saturn, almost in alignment. I was determined to take a photograph; they looked so beautiful hanging there above the dark mountains. The phone camera could not pick them out at all. I fetched my Canon DSLR, the low light outfoxed its auto-function and confused the electronic focus utterly. So I set everything to manual and guessed the speed and aperture based on years of messing up photos on my old 'analogue' Pentax. It worked! The stars are not razor sharp, but for handheld on a slow shutter speed,, I think the results are quite good.

Mars

with its faint companion, Saturn, above and to the right.

I am pleased I have a record of what was a special moment, for when I look at the picture in future I will recall not just the dark mountains and the bright planets above them, but also the soft air, the sound of people chatting and laughing, children playing and momentary silences broken by a lone cicada. That sound is so evocative of Southern Europe in autumn. On hot summer nights you get a cicada wall of sound, a massed choir. On cooler evenings like tonight just one or two cicadas rasp; It sounds plaintive and a little sad, like a lament for the passing year. I remembered summer nights when we camped together with our three children in a big secondhand Cabanon frame tent. It was a pig to erect in the heat, but it allowed us to camp for weeks in Corsica, Sardinia and Elba. 

I felt happy to be sharing tonight with all these Spanish families, though twin wheeled caravans and SUVs have supplanted our mode of transport - an aged Nissan Bluebird estate and faded frame tent. I recalled that years ago I wrote about one of those trips, or at least one memorable evening in Elba, to be precise, I wondered if I could track the piece down, and I did, and here it is.

Rosselba le Palme - dusk

So you believe that at the end your whole
life flashes by. Instead I'd rather cling
to one dear scene, some sentimental thing,
a talisman to fend my fading soul
from bland oblivion, not paradise
regained, but heaven in the here and now.
Across the smoke-grey limestone hills look how
the colours change as slowly daylight dies -
first golden, then peach-pink, now dusky mauve;
aquamarine, the eastern sky; the sea,
a deep turquoise. Amongst our wine and laughter
the first stars sparkle quietly; above,
a plump moon dotes on human revelry:
bliss is now - not desultory hereafter.

e 

Look! Olvera is beautiful.

Seville to Olvera, 75 miles, Camping Pueblo Blanco, €17 per night, 2 nights 

We are heading next to Olvera, a pueblo blanco in the mountains a little to the north of Ronda. First we needed to extricate ourselves from Seville. Both times we have departed Autocaravansas Sevillia it has coincided with the arrival of a fully laden car transporter bumping down the pot-holed track towards us. The access road is too narrow for a truck and a motorhome to pass, so it involves reversing into a gateway to let the truck pass. Two years ago Gill needed to hop out and conduct matters, this time I edged backwards and reversed parked without assistance. I am more confident about manoeuvring Maisy in tight spots these days, practice may not, in truth, lead to being perfect, but I do feel a little less inept as a white van man than I did when we first embarked on our adventures. 

That being said, when we reached the roundabout at the end of the lane I was faced with a conundrum that remains a challenge. Do you believe the road signs or follow the sat-nav? The choice: a sign to the motorway pointing left saying all directions, or any sat-nav wishing to take us right, over the Puentes de la Delicias. My logic, we need the 'A' road to Utera not the motorway, so obey the voice of the ever insistent Muriel. Wrong decision. After the bridge we immediately became embroiled in the city's one way system involving low underpasses, ambiguous signage, scooter drivers with suicidal intent and the odd jay walker who I assumed is one of my bewildered friends from yesterday wandering his way to that special bench of dreams in Jardines de la Delicias. In the end Muriel wins and after only 10 minutes of stress and swearing we are trundling southwards towards Utera.

How you remember a landscape depends on the time of year. When we drove north towards Seville in late winter we were struck by how green the rolling fields seemed; they looked like a giant Tellytubbies set. The contrast was striking as we had spent the previous few weeks in the semi-desert Spaghetti Western badlands around Vera and the Capo de Gaeta. Today, the same fields are corduroy brown, neatly ploughed, with a few green shoots sprouting here and there; winter wheat we speculated. The landscape of treeless rolling arable land comes to an end suddenly near Puerto Serrano and you enter more mountainous terrain.

We pulled off the road and down the narrow lane towards the village. We failed to find a supermarket that might sell us some bread for lunch but we did spot signs to the Via Verde de la Sierra. It is this 30km bike trail that has brought us to this area. The old railway has been converted for cycling and runs from Puerto Serrano to Olvera. The plan was to explore the higher, more mountainous part of the trail which starts at Olvera, then return to Puerto Serrano in a few days and complete the trail from there.

It was a spectacular drive, but not challenging, the road towards Antaguara is wide, with crawler lanes on the steepest climbs specially provided for slow coaches like us. The ACSI camp site is 3km beyond Olvera occupying the whole side of a hill. It's terraced, but the roads are wide and the pitches level and of a good size, which is not always the case in hilly sites. There was nobody in reception when we turned up around 2.00pm. Eventually a guy arrived, and told us to pick a pitch and book in at 4.00 when reception re-opened. We were spoiled for choice, it's a big site and only about half a dozen other vans were parked up. The views beyond Olvera to the higher peaks near Zahara were stunning. After weeks of cloudy skies we rejoiced at the wall to wall blue. Whereas Seville had been hot, here in the mountains it was a perfectly windless 23 degrees. We were lucky, in windy weather the site would be somewhat exposed as it was only established in 2011 and the trees planted for shade and shelter are not yet mature.

The weather has been so unreliable of late the motorhome resembles a laundry van as there has been no opportunity to wash or dry clothes. So, priority number one was to wash a mountain of stuff -clothes, bedding and towels - three machine loads wafting on lines around the pitch.This sparked a outbreak of domesticity, Gill unearthed the sewing kit and repaired a curtain, I emptied the rear garage and removed the layer of sand and mud that builds up, mainly from the levelling ramps; you can't always give them a rince before putting them away. Now enthused about cleaning (a very rare state for me) I gave Maisy a wash. Gill said she could see a big difference, but she may have been being kind.

Awning out

Clear the garage - give it a clean

good sized pitch - washing wafting

running repairs....

scruffy garage - I failed to take an 'after' shot - it looks great now, honest.

That done we unloaded the bikes and went to explore the town. There can be few places more picture perfect than Olvera. Even the more modern outskirts are beautifully maintained. The ancient centre has Moorish origins and climbs to the top of a craggy out-crop, the main street so steep it's stepped. At the top is a Baroque monster of a church and the remains of a castle. The church is a mix of stone and stucco, the castle a cube of pale sandstone. Looking down from the plaza all the other buildings below are an avalanche of glistening white. Beyond, to the south, is the jagged outline of Sierra Margarita. In the opposite direction low sand coloured hills stretch to the horizon, some barren, others polka dotted with olive trees.

Even the grain store was amodernista architectural gem.

After clicking away merrily for a while we descended to the lower town and stopped at a café for coffees. The extended lunch was just ending and everyone seemed very jolly. Well, all the groups of Spanish people were busy exuding whatever the Spanish equivalent is of bonhomie. 

The grey haired American couple three feet behind us were more interested in critical analysis. First they took each ingredient of the meal they has just eaten, chicken, potato, onions, a garlicky sauce, and compared it other meals they had devoured across the globe. So the Spanish chicken was tasty, but not quite as flavoursome as Thai chicken, the patatas bravas delicious, but not quite as spicy as a side dish they once had on the Keys, and the garlicky sauce - well nobody does it quite like a Parisian chef, they agreed. The meal having now been correctly positioned in the context of global cuisine, they moved on to placing the countries of Europe into some kind of cultural hierarchy. Number one they both agreed was Frayance. Next was a matter of some contention, she favoured Idalee, but he made an impassioned case for Speean. As for Greyace, well Airthens apparently was 'up there', but the rest 'did not cut it'. Well, that summed it up for 'Yrup'. I wonder when people started talking in lists? Who invented the bullet point? Is PowerPoint an anathema to rational thought? 

In the unlikely event that the pair even noticed the unassuming English couple on the adjacent table, who sat quietly throughout and hardly exchanged a word, no, they were not conforming to some national stereotype of reticence and social reserve. They were observing, listening, and taking note, for the world is full of intriguing contradictions which confound and challenge the trite assumptions that Trip Advisor thinking constructs. What differentiates the tourist from the traveller is not where they go, but how they observe.

e

Seville - blue sky revenge.

We have visited Seville before. In early Spring 2015 we stayed for a couple of days, visiting the beautiful Moorish Alcazar followed by a lunch of gazpacho in a nice little restaurant in the heart of Barrio de Santa Cruz. Even though preparations for Seville's famous Feria were almost compete, in early Spring there were few tourists about, and I don't recall having to queue for tickets for the Alcazar. 

Quite different today. The city centre was busy and the queue for tickets to visit the cathedral off-putting, so we simply mooched about without much of a plan and in the process clocked up about a 15km walk in temperatures which reached 34° by late afternoon. We've been waiting for warm sun for weeks. Today it arrived with a vengeance.

So, what did we get up to? We are staying, as before, at Autocaravanas Sevillia. The upside, it's secure, only a 2km walk to the centre and relatively cheap at €12 per night. The downsides are considerable. The place doubles-up as a busy car delivery centre. Car transporters roll up every few minutes to unload or collect vehicles. It can be entertaining to watch how deft the drivers are at rocketing shiny new vehicles up the transporters' steep ramps onto the trailers without once falling off the side or shooting off the far end. It's a noisy and diesel fume laden business. This goes on from 8.00am until about 6.30pm, and if you are hoping for a peaceful evening and a good night's sleep, then the container port across the river seems to operate 24hrs. If we return to Seville in the future, I think we will find an alternative place to stay.

Note dockside cranes in background - not a quiet place to stay.

Back to our tour of the city. It's a bit of a hike to the centre of the city centre which is situated on the opposite bank of the the river. It involves a trek up a muddy, potholed avenue of ragged eucalyptus, through an old industrial park then over the long Puentes de las Delicias. If you turn left as soon as you get to the far side there is a short cut to the centre through a small park called Jardines de las Delicias. In fact the gardens are not quite as delicious as their name suggests, being somewhat unkempt, and provide a shady haven for Seville's bewildered to have a kip, or local adolescent couples to find a quiet spot to test how passionate they can become without actually being arrested for public indecency. 

 Jardines de las Delicias has some fine statuary, the human activity takes place off screen, in the bushes.

Once through the park we reached a busy highway, the Paseo de las Delicias. We were next to an impressive building which turned out to be Seville's Conservatoire of Dance. Its students were taking a mid-morning break. As they chatted or checked their phones, as students do, someone would bend forward, lock hands behind back, and, standing on one leg raise the other slowly with perfect poise until it was in perfect parallel with their back, or mid sentence, perform a graceful arc with an outstretched arm, achieving the kind of 'beautiful extension' that attracts approving nods from Darcy on 'Strictly'. It was fascinating to watch. They were a seriously well honed, handsome bunch, young, talented and full of themselves - which is delightful I think. 

The magnificent Conservatoire of Dance

Its handsome students who stopped bending and stretching as soon as I pointed the camera - call yourselves performers...

We crossed the road. Beside a big equestrian statue stands the impressive gates of Parque de Maria Luisa. Nothing unkempt here. The well tended wooded pathways are full of little surprises, gaggles of noisy parakeets hide in the palm trees, statues of wood nymphs decorate shady groves, and pretty little pavilions shimmer in dark pools. The sight and sound of the many fountains bring a welcome relief on a hot day. 

Nymphs!

Fountains

Carriages and hidden parakeets!

Beyond here is the enormous Plaza de España. The huge pavilion is built in an arc around an ornamental lake featuring two tall towers linked by a sweeping, semi-circular arcade. It cannot fail to impress. Built on a monumental scale in an overblown, somewhat garish neo-mujadar style, the building is hardly beautiful, but it's sheer scale and the invention and colour of the tiled decoration makes you smile. It is grand architecture as popular entertainment, and I suspect it is regarded with real affection by the people of Seville. 

Plaza de España. - overblown, exuberant, irreristable...

Gill asked, "When do you think it was built?" I took a guess, "Maybe 1880, a bit later perhaps?." Somewhat to my chagrin, I missed the mark by almost half a century; Plaza de España was built in 1928, as the centrepiece of an Hispano-American exhibition held in Seville that year. In a sense, my error was understandable. In terms of style, the building has more in common with the ornate ebullience of Parisian Belle Epoqu or High Victorian extravaganzas than contemporary buildings from the 1920s. In 1928, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoy was already five years old, Walter Gropius had just completed the Bauhaus, and building workers in New York were racing to construct the tallest skyscrapers in the world. All these buildings looked to the future. 

Difficult to believe the date - 1928

Conversely, Plaza de España deliberately looks back, evoking past glories, both in its reactionary style and overtly nationalist decoration. This is most apparent in the decorative panels which adorn the tiled seats and niches in the arched loggia. Each is dedicated to a city in Spain and the painted tiles commemorate a significant event from the place's past. These range from defeating the Moors, bringing back booty from South American colonies, battles with the French, Portuguese and British, a range of saintly miracles and the odd fiesta or technical triumph, such as the first flight to the Canary Islands. The whole thing presents Spain as a European Catholic power with an significant imperialist history, which, of course it was. What saves these scenes from being dry as dust is the wide variety of different styles among the pictures and sprinkled among events of historical import a few more lively scenes, like the picture of Don Quixote and revellers at Seville's Feria.

Each niche provides a shady seat - and takes as its theme a Spanish city.

Themes include -  defeated Moors

Christian knights spurred on by a semi clad woman...

More supplicant Moors

Bare chested  natives bow before Spanish overlords...

It's not all imperialist hokum - a more gentle scene of peasant life

The first flight to the Canaries commemorated

A scene from Don Quixote

Sevillia's Feria depicted in a more modern style.

A more gentle scene

and a genre piece that reminds me of a Goya etching.

Plaza de España's conscious anachronism becomes significant is when you compare it to the pavilion designed by Mies Van de Rohe in the same year for a rival international exhibition hosted by the Catalan authorities in Barcelona. It is scarcely believable that two such public monuments, in radically different styles could be produced in the same country simultaneously. 

Seville, 1928

Barcelona, 1928

I suppose this could be dismissed as a minor, if slightly intriguing footnote in the architectural history of the 20th century, except it reveals how divided Spain was at the time -, between people allied to an autocratic Catholic conservatism that celebrated the country's militaristic, imperialist past, in conflict with radical modernisers with left leaning sympathies found mainly in Catalunya and the Basque region. Only six years later these tensions erupted into civil war. 

Plaza de España's exuberance, epic scale and overt popularism is infectious. 

It is impossible not to be enamoured by the beautiful, arabic inspired spaces

Here's a fan!

The plaza is an engaging public space, but there is a shadowy aspect to what it represents. The monument  is charming, seductive even, but not entirely benign. Maybe that's where it wins over the Mies Van de Rohe pavillion, because great buildings, like great art, present challenges; they are contradictory.

Beyond Plaza de España the city centre is a short stroll. On the way you pass the long neo-classical facade of the Royal Tobacco Factory made famous by the opera Carmen. These days it houses the Philology department of the University of Seville. There did not seem to be any security on the door, so we wandered in. It's a very impressive building, unlike any disused factory I have seen. 

The staircase reminded me of an Escher print.

Nearby, the area around the Cathedral and  Av.de la Constitución is pedestrianised, or more accurately, a car free zone. You share the space with trams, bikes, horse drawn carriages and prowling Segway tours. It does not create a relaxed atmosphere. 

If the carriage drivers don't get you, the segway victims will.

The area around the cathedral is beautiful

and the queue - enormous

We checked out the ticket queue to visit to the cathedral. It stretched out into the street, so we decided to give it a miss. Instead we headed to a nearby restaurant, Cervecería Giralda, which had been given the thumbs-up in our guidebook as somewhere that served tasty, inexpensive tapas in an interesting setting - an old Arabic bath house. Given that the place is only a few metres from the Cathedral and Alcazar the place certainly does not hike up its prices, and the food was excellent.

Cervecería Giralda, - nice place, cheap tapas...

Afterwards we managed to become completely lost in the tangle of alleys beneath the walls of the Alcazar. We were trying to navigate towards Seville's famous bullring, but popped out in the square beside the cathedral, which was diametrically opposite to where we were meant to be. 

Barrio Santa Cruz - a very confusing place

Instead we headed down to the river and walked to the bullring that way. It was less atmospheric, but more straightforward. Out of the shade of the narrow alleys of Barrio de Santa Cruz we began to realise that it was warming up. After taking some pictures of the bullring we were pleased to reach the shady streets to the north of it. 

Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla

I had in my head the image of a small square with a church raised on steps.I was sure we had a really great coffee at a cafe there the last time we were here. I was equally certain it was in this area, but became increasingly frustrated as no amount of wandering up and down, consulting streetview, staring at our map and muttering helped find the place. We did come across lots of other interesting streets, less overtly touristy than Barrio de Santa Cruz.and in the end sense prevailed; we settled for a different cafe.

Quieter streets north of the bullring

Now it was getting uncomfortably hot and we were footsore. Out of curiosity, as we sat waiting to be served, I consulted Google maps to find out how far it was to Autocaravanas Sevillia. The answer, a tad under 5km, a long walk on a very warm afternoon. We decided, even though there was little shade the quickest way back to the bridge was to follow the promenade by the river. An information sign gave the temperature as 34 degrees. From time to time we founded shady benches and rested. That way we made good progress and soon the Puentes de las Delicias appeared in the distance.

A small cruise ship was anchored near it. As we passed the vessel gave a long hoot on its siren and cast off. We had noticed the ship moored upstream when we crossed the bridge this morning. Given the somewhat ramshackle mechanism I had assumed that the lifting gear on the bridge must be obsolete. However, this could not be the case as the cruise boat was far to tall to navigate past the bridge. I don't think this happens regularly as a few people, like ourselves, were hurrying to a viewpoint to take photos of the raised bridge and MV. Star Pride sailing slowly towards it. Clearly the cruise company liked to create a bit of atmosphere  and music was wafting across the water from the ship's sound system. The choral ensemble sounded a bit Russian, like something the Red Army Choir might have performed in the 1970s. I think it was intended to give the occasion gravitas, whereas in fact it seemed to me to sound slightly sinister,

The excitement over we found ourselves back at Jardines de las Delicias, the path by the river is even scruffier than the route we took in the morning. There had been a shift change. The elevenses bewildered had been supplanted by the tea-time dishevelled and a different couple of adolescents were entwined on a park bench busy proving that teenage hormones are an effective analgesic against agony caused by protruding wrought iron.

The final couple of kilometres were brutal, over the bridge, back through the industrial wasteland and down the cratered eucalyptus avenue, searing heat, sore feet, zombie walk legs. Being sixty something is a pain in the arse, and that ached too.

e