The pink greenways of Jerez.

We have visited Jerez twice before. The first time we caught the train from El Puerto, the second was a stop-off on the way to somewhere else. We stayed at a motorhome repair place that also does overnight parking on the edge of the city. It was too far to walk into the centre, we got no further than the nearby Aldi.

We returned to the place again, it was exactly the same, perhaps the building's balconies were not painted in lurid  pink. One thing that was the same was the the welcome, every guest is offered a small glass of sherry, a nice touch, we opted for oloroso.

  

What I don't remember are the dusky pink bike tracks all the way into the city centre. Maybe they are recent developments. Anyway it's all very impressive, not just the cycleways but the traffic management system too. Every single junction is controlled by lights and cyclists are given priority. The whole set up is as good as anywhere we've seen, comparable with Stockholm or Copenhagen. Well done Jerez! The UK is decades behind.

We had no specific plans, find some nice old square and have lunch. Most of the old streets in the historical centre are semi-pedestrianised. There are bike racks provided where the pink cycle lanes meet the old cobbled streets. It's all well organised. We locked our bikes up and headed off on foot.

We had no idea where we were going, after about 200m we came across a shady square called Plaza Patero lined with cafés and restaurants, it was a little before Ipm. a little early for the locals to arrive for lunch, we chose a place at random called Casa Gabriella, ordered a Tio Pepe (Gill) and an oloroso (Pete) and asked for a menu.

A male Flamenco performer was doing his thing a few feet away, his acapella plaintive song interrupted from time to time by intense dance steps. He was slim built, of inderminate age with a craggy face and deep set eyes like an apostle by Zurbarán. After collecting small change from each café's customers he moved on.

We ordered food, but concluded it may take a while to arrive as suddenly everywhere went from almost empty to packed out. On a Monday in February, is it always this busy, we wondered. Our tapas arrived sporadically, the waiter apologised for the slightly chaotic service, but it was so busy that they had to bring out additional tables and chairs. We didn't mind, we weren't in a hurry and the food was excellent. Are the standout dishes always the ones you photograph? What looks good isn't always what tastes best. Still, I do remember both of these as looking great and being delicious ...

Empanadilla Pisto Huevno Poc

Carridillada al oloroso

It was mid-afternoon by the time we had finished our coffee. We made a a half hearted attempt at being tourists by walking to the adjacent square, Plaza del Progreso. It had a church and a monument in the middle of the Virgin Mary in majesty, but then so do many others, with a five kilometer ride back to the van we decided to head back via Mercadona.

The last time we were here I was a bit rude about the outskirts of Jerez. They are unremarkable, modern and quite bland, but they are not unpleasant. The whole place seems quite prosperous, well designed and looked after. I imagine the quality of life here would be good.

While checking the opening times of Mercadona we noticed it was closed tomorrow. It's Andalucia day and a public holiday. This explains why Casa Gabriella was so busy on a Monday If people are off work tomorrow quite a few of them probably took today off as well to make a long weekend of it. We are heading north tomorrow, either the roads will be full of holiday traffic or utterly empty because people are celebrating with a big family meal at home. We shall see.

Triangulation

Over the past week we have visited two of the points on the Sherry triangle; the third was fully booked. Our plan was to spend a couple of days in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, move on to El Puerto de Santa Maria, maybe take the ferry Cadiz for a day trip, then visit Jerez. It was a good plan, however we failed to factor in the Cadiz carnival. When Gill phoned the campsite at El Puerto it was full, so we spent four days near Sanlúcar in all.

When we stayed at Camper Park Sanlúcar last year it had been open less than a year. It's very much a no frills basic site, but everything works and the couple who own it are friendly and accommodating. It has built up a following. This year it was almost full when we arrived and 'completo' over the weekend. 

Booking-in prompted one of those inadvertently comic situations that from time to time are bound to assail 'travellers in a foreign land'. A shed by the entrance serves as reception but it's rarely staffed. The place is quite compact so you can find the owner doing some odd job or other around the site Gill tracked him down, "Go find somewhere, I come later to make the chicken." he instructed. 

Chicken?" Gill queried. 

"Si," he replied, "at the autocaravanas" later I come for check in." 

He found the misunderstanding very funny. However, it proved prophetic. The camper park  is situated half way between Sanlúcar and a smaller town called Chipiona about 10 kilometres to the east. The locality is full of smallholdings, orchards and orange groves, none of them more than an acre or two. Every single one keeps chickens. Waking at in the countryside at first light conjures an image of gentle birdsong, doves cooing; here there was not so much a dawn chorus as a morning clarion as dozens of cockerels vied with each other, joined moments later by the neighbourhood farm dogs yelping  annoyance at their rude awakening. The place is not peaceful  especially at the weekend when Spanish families arrive, but it's spirited and lively, we like it. 

Sanlúcar de Barrameda is a sizeable town, these days we head straight to the centre, lock our bikes outside the tourist office and make a bee-line for Plaza del Cabildo. 

Maybe its my favourite small square, in Spain, not because the architecture is exceptional or its famous but because exudes a sort of joyful ordinariness. A place where people gather, in groups or on there own watching the world go by. The cafés are busy, people meet and chat by the fountain among the squabbling pigeons.

Casa Balbino is situated in the corner. In a town and a region renowned for good food this modest local restaurant, run by the same family for three generations has achieved an almost cult status as the place to find authentic tapas. Rated by Lonely Planet but still predominantly local.

The menu doesn't change much and amazingly neither had the prices. We always go for patatas aliñas - a tuna, potato, onion in a herb dressing served as a cold salad. 

Then we chose a stew of pork loin in beer sauce, salmon in a dill and mustard sauce, and fried chorizo. 

Accompanied by a small glass of Manzanilla, Sanlúcar's unique sherry, we had a small and inexpensive feast. What is great about tapas, because you are sharing small plates you don't end up overeating at lunchtime and able to do stuff in the afternoon rather than needing a snooze.

As we were eating on the terrace the square filled with young teenagers in fancy dress, another carnival event. I think it must have been a school party, the teachers were in fancy dress too. They encircled the fountain then marched around it banging drums and making a big hullabaloo. Earlier I had overheard the camper park owner explaining to someone heading for the Cadiz carnival that the celebrations were scattered across a whole month, the big streets parades were just one aspect of it. 

We had put a couple of days aside to stay in Sanlúcar but now it had stretched to four because the site at El Puerto de Santa Maria was booked solid. In the end the delay proved serendipitous, without having been at a loose end we would never have happened upon Chipiona. Every time travel in  Spain the place springs some delightful surprise or other. This small seaside town is definitely one of them.

A bike track runs from la Jara, the hamlet near the camper stop, to Chipiona then onwards to Rota. It's another Via Verde using the route of a disused railway, this one built to transport produce from the orchards and market gardens that cover the wetlands of the Guadalaquivir estuary.  

The reason we headed into Chipiona was purely practical,  the Carrefour Market there wasn't our nearest supermarket, but the easiest one to get to on our bikes because of the bike track. 

As we approached the town I shouted to Gill, "Look it's got a lighthouse!" (she is a pharos aficianado).  By the time she glanced up the distant view of its top disappeared behind an apartment block. A moment later it reappeared. "Look!" I shouted, now pointing. Again - the same disappearing trick. Gill was now convinced a sad moment had arrived, the thing that has been threatening for years;l - Pete's marbles, completely gone. 

We pedalled past the marina and a big area autocaravanas and into the centre. Chipiona is a typical traditional Andalucian white town built in a grid pattern with narrow streets and a one way system so intricate that navigating it requires a mind adept at solving suduko or a rubrics cube. 

Eventually we arrived in the central square. It was deserted but full of the sound of people socialising, a hubbub of chat and laughter echoing down the empty streets that led off from the plaza. It felt uncanny.

The explanation was disappointingly mundane. It was Spain, 2pm, extended lunch was in full swing. Though the weather was brilliantly sunny the temperature barely reached double figures. The sound conviviality filled the unpeopled alleyways through the open windows of bars and restaurants.

We arrived at Carrefour, shopped quickly and filled our panniers with groceries. It's surprising how much you can carry on two bikes. On the way here we passed a street signed 'Avenue del Faro'. I remained convinced that the I had glimpsed the lantern top of a lighthouse beyond Chipiona's mid-rise blocks. I insisted we head back taking the eponymous avenue.

Tahdah! At the end of it a very fine lighthouse indeed. I felt exonerated, not every single marble mislaid just yet.

In fact Chipiona's is the tallest lighthouse in Spain, a nearby information board asserted, and the 17th tallest in the world...this latter fact somewhat undermining the boast of the former.

Laden with groceries our progress back to the van was somewhat stately. In parts the cycleway is potholed and the sandy surface loose, the heavy panniers made the bikes a tad unsteady. Taking it slowly gave me a chance to better appreciate the surroundings. The estuarial soil must be very fertile. The whole area is covered in smallholdings and orchards growing all kinds of fruit and veg from oranges to carrots. 

If you are cycling in a built up area you have to be vigilant and stay switched on for the safety of yourself and others. On a quiet cycleway, pedalling slowly you can let your mind wander, like you might when taking a quiet country walk.  

 

The landscape beside the track resembled a giant allotment, very productive but a bit homespun and scruffy. Some houses were modern and stylish, others ancient, half ruined but still inhabited.

I decided it was idyllic, how the land was peopled, but not densely populated like an urban area, instead a scattering of small farms, market gardens and hamlets connecting nearby towns. I recalled a notion from Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' about 'a globe of villages' rather than a global village. 

Something about the scrap of nowhere we were cycling through made me think that a greener world might be possible, there was something hopeful about the landscape, highly productive, but sustainable and on a human scale.

Next day was Saturday, we pedalled back to Chipiona, whereas yesterday it had been deserted, today was warmer and the town was much busier, lots of people heading for lunch, some in fancy dress, as the Camper Stop owner had explained , 'carnivale' is more a season than an event.

The day was bright and the light crystal clear. The view from the town's curving esplanade was magnificent, a great sweeping bay, the Donana National Park's lonely shoreline, barely inhabited until you reach Huelva. Further away on the horizon there were some low hills or high dunes. The area near Isla Cristina, we conjectured, or even the coast of Portugal by Olâo, waggling Google maps on our phones in an attempt to align them with the view.

Chipiona itself dates back to Roman times at least. However a unique set of structures built out from its rocky foreshore may well have a more ancient provenance. The "corralles' are low barnacle encrusted walls built between rock outcrops. At high tide they are submerged, but as the sea ebbs extensive shallow pools form filled with fish. Using small tridents local fishermen simply wade out and spear their catch. It's a very old but highly effective form of fish farming. 

The 'corralles' are protected and the unique culture they represent celebrated with a statue of a fisherman and his young helper.

Further along the esplanade another aspect of the 'triangle's' heritage is memorialised. Flamenco is not a homogeneous style, each one of Andalucia's major settlements has developed a variant of the 'solea', the basic gipsy form which underpins flamenco.

The statue of a renowned local flamenco guitarist shares the seafront with the fisherman.  I have tried reading about Flamenco, but unless you can understand Spanish and have a rudimentary grasp of music theory it's all a bit bewildering.  The article did have translations of some famous flamenco lyrics. 

You presume that you are science

 I don't understand it like that

 Because being you the science

 You have not understood me 

I wanted to change him and he did not want

 A polka dot scarf

 For another with a smooth background

 Evils that time brings

 Who could penetrate them

 to remedy them

 Before the damage came

Cool but gnomic I concluded, like Wallace Stevens. History tells the story of what has changed, but continuity is written large in vernacular culture, like the fisher folk's corralles or flamenco - where the story of a migrant people is revealed not in words but in  haunting modal melodies more akin to Indian ragas than European music.

Chipiona is a small town with a lot to see. In some ways it is quite ordinary, then suddenly on a mundane street you come across a beautiful small modernista villa...

or a stunning art deco doorway in an otherwise unremarkable house...

 We will definitely come back here, but it's time to move on to Jerez, the second point in our incomplete tour of the sherry triangle.

 

 

From one Via Verde to another

Spain has been a rich source of minerals for millennia. The Romans and Carthaginians fought over control of Iberia's silver mines. However the peninsula's mineral riches have been exploited by foreign powers in more recent history. Between the mid nineteenth century until a change in Spanish law in1921 almost 600 British based mining companies were active in Spain, 200 of them working in Andalucia alone. The reason for this was simple, Britain's early industrial revolution was powered by native natural resources, but in order to compete with other emerging industrial powers such as America and Germany, as raw materials such as iron and copper became depleted at home new sources of supply had to be found abroad. In the years before to the WW1 Britain was involved in a naval arms race with Germany. This demanded ever more iron ore. British dominance of the Spanish mining sector not only provided the required raw materials but also prevented German access to them.

Why might have anything to do with our trip? In order to transport the raw materials mining companies built narrow gauge mineral railways. As mining declined the tracks fell into disuse, until many were repurposed in the last couple of decades as cycleways - via verdes as the they are termed here. In total Spain has 1200kms of them scattered across most regions. We don't have some grand plan to cycle every single one, but we do try to seek them out if we are in the locality and there's a convenient place to park the van nearby.

We've just finished really good bike ride on the Via Verde de la Sierra. The cycle track follows the route of an old line through the hills southeast of Seville.

This particular one wasn't built by a British mining company. It dates from the middle part of the twentieth century, partly a Franco era infrastructure project for economic development but also supported by the military. The line never got to the point of getting the tracks laid. Sporadic progress was made, tunnels and viaducts constructed, deep cuttings excavated through mountainous terrain, stations constructed.

However during the 1960s Spain, after decades of isolation, began to attract foreign investment focussing on automotive industries, shipbuilding and tourism. Priorities switched and the railway through the Sierras was abandoned; no train ever ran along it. However, it does make a great cycleway!

Between Puerto Serrano and Olvera the route follows the valleys of the Rio Guadalete and its tributary Rio Guadalporcún. Around Puerto Serrano the countryside is pastoral, smooth rolling hills bright green at this time of year with winter cereal crops. Soon though the rivers enters a limestone landscape, winding through craggy outcrops before entering a narrow gorge.

It all makes for an interesting ride, in some ways a familiar one. The trees, flora and fauna may different but the geology is not so different to our local 'via verdes' - the Tissington and Monsal dale trails in the Peak District.

The car park at Puerto Serrano station is not officially designated as a a motorhome stopping place, but people do stay overnight here. It gets ever more popular and whether there is space or not comes down to pot luck. As we turned right into the approach road two other motorhomes followed us, we nipped into the last parking bay and they turned around and left. I didn't feel great about it, but we were glad to be able to cycle the trail as planned.

We managed a round trip of about 25km, most of the trail is relatively flat as you would expect on a disused railway. 

There are two short sections with much steeper gradients. When we cycled here last year these sudden steep bits made no sense to me; I wondered if on these sections rolling stock had to be winched up the hills, they seemed much too steep for any locomotive to manage. Not having read the article that explained that the project was never fully completed, I wonder if the steep sections were meant to be bridged but the viaducts were never constructed. 

There is a well designed web-site giving details of all Spain's Via Verdes. Not only does it have an annotated map showing the entrance points, car parks and a schematic diagram of the gradients, but also information on the history of each.  

One gloomy Sunday before we came away I entertained myself by comparing the Via Verde locations with 'Search for Sites' to identify cycleways with a place to stay in a moho nearby. Our Michelin road atlas of Spain and Portugal is now daubed with squiggles of pink highlighter and annotated with co-ordinates of areas autocaravanas. 

It's the kind of nerdy activity I find curiously absorbing. Goodness knows why I spent decades living under the misapprehension that I had the talent to become a 'minor poet' when in reality my actual aptitude was for admin. I suppose few of us deliberately aspire to be creatures of habit and unexceptional, but the truth is most of us are.

Having covered Spain in pink squiggles I now turned my attention to Portugal. For some reason I assumed that if cycleways were called Via Verde in Spain the same would be the case in Portugal, even though I knew from bitter experience that the quickest way to annoy a Portuguese person is to thank them with a well meant but miscued 'muchas gracias. Google 'Via Verde Portugal' and you get too much information about their motorway's auto toll system called - 'Via Verde'. It transpires that  cycleways in Portugal are called  'eco pistas'.

Goggle 'eco pista" and you then discover that there are comparatively few of them. However there was one running north from Evora towards Arraiolos. We were planning to stop in Evora on our way back to Spain. There seemed to be a parking area close to where the eco pista skirted the town's northern suburbs. However, when we arrived it was chilly and dull and our enthusiasm to off-load the bikes diminished. Instead we drove to another car park closer to Evora's historic centre and headed off to explore on foot.

This is the third time we have visited Evora but only the second time we have been to the centre. Last year we got no further than the campsite and it's immediate vicinity. We were still self isolating after having succumbed to Covid. We were both still testing positive, feeling very fatigued and even if we had not felt duty bound to avoid human contact the 2km. walk into the centre would have been too much for us.

So in fact it is more than five years since we were in the town centre. Back in 2017 Evora's famous Roman temple was entirely covered in shrink wrapped scaffolding. Now it is fully restored. Sadly,  not much of it remains. In may actually have been more striking visually when covered in white polythene.

Looking back at the blog from back then, I observed that Evora's ancient centre was a place of two halves. 

Both areas had interesting old cobbled streets and ancient buildings, one part felt quite atmospheric and a tad bookish, the other area next to the cathedral and Roman ruins a tourist trap full of crappy gift shops. This time we never quite got beyond this latter area. 

We did find a well reviewed bakery down a side street and the pastéis de nata were excellent. It did feel authentic, but the displays of traditional cooking utensils and vintage packaging were clearly pitched at visitors.

Can anywhere that has been so carefully curated be authentic? Is authenticity an outmoded concept? Those were my thoughts as I consumed my beautifully baked custard tart. Perhaps it's  the pastéis' traditional recipe and the skill to bake it passed down through generations that are truly authentic, a rare quality given our ever more vicarious existence.

We got slightly lost on the way back to the van, ending up in a tangle of alleys and small streets behind the area full of shops selling cork trinkets. 

It was peaceful. Evora is a big enough town not to be entirely overwhelmed by visitors. With an overbearing tourist trade, impressive cathedral and ancient streets encircled by medieval walls Evora reminded me of York. Though the town hasn't quite achieved the same iconic status as a touristy hellhole as its cousin from North Yorkshire; Evora lacks a Harry Potter wizard shop.

We moved car park for the third time, heading to Evora's area autocaravanas situated on the south side of the town opposite the football stadium. There was a match on so the car parking spaces were fully occupied making it a tight squeeze to reverse park into one of the few remaining larger bays reserved for motorhomes. Towards dusk the match finished, there were a few cheers and chanting as the crowd dispersed. I suspect it was a home win.

As the car parking spaces emptied they were occupied by more motorhomes which kept arriving well after dark. When we woke up the next morning fifty or so vans had gathered. It's free, has a well designed service point, Evora is close to a  motorway linking  Spain and Portugal that provides an alternative route to the Algarve to the usual one along the south coast. Even so, I never expected fifty motorhomes to be gathered in Portugal's empty middle bit on a Sunday night in early February. It reinforced my sense that when we began our winter wanderings seven years ago what we were doing was popular, but a bit niche. Now that the every babyboomer in Northern Europe has retired and the first tranche of Generation X grey hairs have also joined the winter wanderers, what was once niche is now a  mass migration. We will continue our winter journeys for as long as we are able, but our future wanderings are not going to be quite as lonely as our earlier ones. 

 

We headed for the Spanish border cutting southwest from Badajos on N roads towards Merida, I am not sure where the previous night's moho flock was heading, but it certainly was not the same way as us. The roads were quiet, the sky big and the landscape appealingly lonely. 

The distance from Evora to Puerto Serrano is about 350km, doable in a day at a stretch, roughly the same distance as Buxton to Portsmouth, and we manage that. However, getting to Puerto Serrano meant navigating Seville's urban motorways then a bit more. In the end we opted to split the trip. Gill consulted "Searchforsites' and found a free area autocaravanas a little to the west of Seville in Umbrete. It too was busy with around twenty vans using the place.

It was basic, next to a sports hall, run by the municipality probably. Though the area was a bit dismal the place was next to a big olive grove with an unmetalled track running through it. Olive groves are never dismal, we took a walk through the trees at twilight. Their gnarled trunks darkened as the light faded yet their leaves retained a silvery sheen. There is something magical about olive trees. 

I had taken my old Canon DSLR with me, I rarely use it these days. I decided it might be fun to pretend I was a decent photographer. I switched onto manual and set it to monochrome mode, trying to recall everything I'd half forgotten about ISO, fstops and depth of field. The results were not quite as Bill Brandt as I'd hoped. I cant't compete with my camera phone's AI, its a sign of the times that a handheld gadget is a much better photographer than I am.

With luck the unplanned extra stop would result in us  arriving in Puerto Serrano before noon and increase our chances of getting a parking place for the Via Verde. 

Which it did.