The long range forecast looked decidedly mixed, so we decided to head back to Spain on the basis that in general the winter climate on the Mediterranean coast around Almeria tends to be more consistently warm and sunny and less affected by Atlantic fronts than in Portugal. However, Almeria is 500 miles from the Alentejo and tearing about Iberia in search of the sunniest spot doesn't actually make much sense. Our compromise- to head towards the Sherry Triangle then see what the forecast says in a week's time.
However, our planned destination, Jerez de la Frontera, was more than a day's drive so we needed to find an overnight stop somewhere. We set the sat-nav to Umbrete, a small to town about 10 kilometres west of Seville, but despite using the toll motorway to Faro, it became obvious by mid afternoon that we were unlikely to reach our planned destination before nightfall. Just before we reached the Spanish border we pulled off the motorway and headed for large area autocaravanas in Vila Real de Santo António.
The town is a former tuna fishing port occupying the west bank of the estuary of the Guadiana. Spain lies on the opposite side of the river about 300m away. The area autocaravanas is extensive, two big bare patches of gravel with room for a couple of hundred vans in the old, half abandoned dock area.
It was about half full, occupied mainly by French motorhomes parked up somewhere cheap for the duration. As they often do the French had colonised the place, lunch at noon on the dot, boule 'en masse' afterwards.
The docks looked abandoned and the old canning factories beyond the quayside roofless and graffiti daubed. We walked into town. It had seen better days, an alluring mixture of faded grandeur and dilapidation interspersed by occasional attempts at regeneration.
The biggest building in the town is an enormous but largely defunct ferry terminal. It is a monument to Vila Real de Santo António's recent decline.
The impressive Ponte Internacional do Guadiana a few kilometres north of the town carries the A22/A49 autovia over the river, connecting Spain to Portugal. The bridge is relatively recent, completed in 1991. Before then the only way to get from Andalusia to tha Algarve was to to take the ferry - hence the enormous ferry terminal on the quayside, Before the 1990s every single vehicle taking the southern route from Spain into Portugal had to pass through Vila Real de Santo António. As soon as the bridge opened the town was instantly sidelined. No wonder the place looks as if it has seen better days.
However the town has an interesting past. It was designed as a new town by in the mid eighteenth century by the Marquis of Pombal, who was responsible for the redevelopment of Lisbon after the devastating 1755 earthquake. The rationalist, enlightenment layout is still plain to see today on Google maps - very rectilinear!
Why the town was established is unclear. Up until this point the area had been a semi-militarised badland next to the Spanish border, as testified by the two enormous fortresses in nearby Castro Marim. Perhaps by building a new town the Portuguese authorities hopes to civilise the the area and promote trade, which I suppose it did, until the bridge was built thirty years ago and Vila Real de Santo António reverted to being a backwater.
I only came across the history of the town the day after we left, which is a shame, as I would probably have taken more notice of the place, instead of moaning about the dysfunctional automatic payment machine or making snarky comments about the quirky folkways and cultural mores of our Gallic fellow travellers.
Now we are parked up in Jerez de la Frontera at the usual place - La Morada Del Sur. Handily situated on outskirts of Jerez, just off the A4 motorway this motorhome repair and storage company offers about 20 touring spots. A well designed cycle path leads from here straight into the city's historic centre. It's about a four kilometre bike ride.
The heart of Jerez clusters around the remains of the Arabic Alcazar, an alluring mix tangle of old street, shady squares and beautiful buildings from the medieval to the modernista. However I like the city's more recent outskirts too. The bike ride to the city centre, all on purpose built pink cycle tracks, takes you down broad avenues lined with retail outlets and stylish apartment blocks. There is lots of greenery, a wide pavement running down the central reservation flanked by neatly trimmed lawns and shrubberies. Tall palms waft overhead. It looks like an odd mash-up of L.A. and Milton Keynes. It feels relaxed and comfortable. I Iove it.
We more or less repeated exactly what we did last year. Lunch at 'Casa Gabriela' in Plaza Plateros, then a wander around the old streets thereabouts.
Jerez is a vibrant place, there is always something going on. Last year we were entertained as we ate by a lone male flamenco performer, his impassioned song interspersed with intricate, intense dance moves .This year's performance was more immersive, we heard it long before we could see it. We presumed the thirty strong brass orchestra with drums must have belonged to a local confraternity; the ensemble was led by an elderly man holding a ribbon decked staff topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary and attendant cherubims.
The musicians themselves came in all shapes and sizes from portly middle-aged men to skinny tweenies sporting Doc Martens. Young or old the musicianship on display was impressive and very loud!
After lunch we walked towards Plaza Aranel. An orderly queue had formed outside a cake shop, so we joined it.
We bought three small cakes thinking we might find somewhere in the shade to devour them. We failed, but somehow managed to transport them back to the van without the creamy concoctions getting squished. No mean feat considering the neatly wrapped cakes had to share the panniers with the shopping we bought at Mercadona on the way back to the van.
The cakes were nice but nothing special, neither of us have a sweet tooth, so maybe we failed to appreciate them properly. One of them reminded me of the Moroccan delicacies we once had at an Arabic owned restaurant in Almeria.
Next day we planned to move to an area autocaravanas situated on a minor road between Chipiona and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. As we pulled out of La Morada Del Sur Gill observed, "It's good we know about here because if we ever had something up with van when we are in the south of Spain they would probably be able to fix it." As it turned out this proved to be both prescient and mistaken in equal measure
It was less than an hour's drive to our next destination, Camper Park Sanlúcar. The owner wandered across, he remembered us from previous years - we're regulars! We parked up and began to sort ourselves out. I pushed back the fly screen on the main roof light, the blind came off its runners and drooped pathetically, leaving a tangle of cord dangling down.
A bit of googling established that our roof light was a 'Heiki mini', that the blind wa irreparable but a replacement was inexpensive and readily available. Gill messaged La Morada Del Sur, yes they could fix it but the earliest slot they had was in two weeks time. We resigned ourselves to living with a droopy blind until we returned home in April. It joins a list of minor glitches that need fixing, the intermittent dripping pipe behind the sink unit and the bathroom door hinge stuck together with Gorilla tape.
It's a rare occasion when everything works perfectly in a motorhome. Both the ones we have owned have displayed a propensity to quietly fall to bits despite being 'German built', supposedly a byword for being 'well screwed together'. Part of the problem comes from over-design, naff attempts to make what is a utilitarian object more homely, stylish or luxurious. The Burstner we own now has lots of needless nooks and crannies or flimsy decorative touches like French blinds in the bedroom - all unnecessary in my view.
I suppose the other reason why we constantly have to keep fixing things is motorhomes are designed for leisure time use - weekends away, a couple of weeks holiday here and there. We live in ours for months on end, it's probably had more use in the five years we've owned it than most vans have over their entire existence. So, things will wear out; I guess we should just accept the repair bills as part of the cost of our travels. It would help if I was more practically minded and could fix things myself. I'm not. I have to simply accept that the skills I have developed over the years have no monetary value whatsoever, whereas the ones that I lack come at a cost as I have to pay someone else to do them.
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