So here we are at the end of our first week away, perched on a hillside near Ronda with the air temperature rapidly cooling, now that the sun has gone down.
We’re travelling with friends and it’s been a very different experience. The best thing about travelling with others is having other people to talk to, drink with and visit places together. I’ve really enjoyed Clare’s enthusiasm over seeing new places and having her to look at Burgos cathedral with me. Similarly, Alan has had Darren’s company while we were looking at sites they didn’t want to see.
On the down side, travelling with others in convoy, is not easy. Competing satnav systems (answer turn one off), dithering on roundabouts (answer turn sat nav back on) lead to loss of patience which has to be curbed before meeting up! The real answer is to travel separately. The other main difficulty is one’s time not being one’s own, so a slight feeling of pressure at doing things in different timescales. No lying abed in the mornings!
So, we made our way to Burgos on the first night and boy was it cold. That wind whips across the Madrid plain and cuts right into you. My suspicions were first aroused when I saw a woman with a tightly buttoned coat at a traffic light, looking rather windswept and cold. She didn’t look too happy.
The cathedral was worth the visit though and then we headed firmly south the next day towards Caceres, stopping overnight by a deserted reservoir and then exploring a ghost town of Extremedura the next day. This took some finding, as the reference in the guide book was minimal and we kept driving round in circles (again).
The weather was gradually getting warmer but I still wasn’t tempted out of my vest, which I had very wisely donned in Burgos. So, to Caceres where we stayed within walking distance of the city centre and indulged in tapas and beer (men) and rosado wine for Clare and me. In this part of Spain, rosé wine or rosado as it’s called, is almost red. It’s delicious. Well, after all, we were drinking it in a sunny plaza in late November, so it can’t have been bad.
Merida the next day was a strange mix of Roman remains (one of the largest cities in the Empire) and modern drabness. It was cheap though with tapas around 1€ compared to over 2€ elsewhere. Note – if you want to work out how expensive a place is in Spain, just look at the price of tapas…
So we processed on to Zafra which had some very pretty squares and Spanish families enjoying their Sunday evenings with children playing football in the park or trying out their bikes, while mum, dad, granny, grandpa, uncle and auntie gazed on indulgently from the bar where they were sitting, nattering on to each other.
The camper park itself was really really noisy with horrendous traffic on the nearby dual carriageways – erk, not a good night.
By this time, Alan and I were beginning to feel a little jaded. How many towns was that in how many days?
We headed off firmly to Seville where we met up with Laurence and Kate who are friends of Darren and Clare and who have been travelling around Europe for over 3 years in their van. They are heading back to Australia next year via Russia and Korea…. We handed over the baton, they could now run with the youngsters! So we patted them all on their respective backs and off they went into Seville ( our excuse was that we’d had a long weekend here only a couple of years ago). We relaxed into our chairs in the sunny lorry park by the port of Seville and watched the cranes unloading boats. Very picturesque….
And now here we are in Ronda, after a short drive through some very beautiful scenery on a lovely sunny day. We’ve relaxed all afternoon, done our long overdue laundry, showered and chatted with our friends. And yes, in case you are wondering, I have taken my vest off, though the night looks cold and we may be heading for the Sierra Nevada soon…..