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.
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