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.