Monday 16 September - Cordoba - Rest Day

Tuesday 17 September - Cordoba - Carmona - 65 Miles

I thoroughly enjoyed Cordoba, a nice city, full of interesting history, and lovely to wander about.  Good food as well.  I’d found a marvellous AirBnB which was very civilised and quiet, set in a courtyard off the street. I will be back one day.  The general trend of my ride today was roughly downhill from Cordoba, but the last 15 miles or so were very definitely uphill to Carmona, which is set on a bluff above the valleys it commands.  Also, the wind wasn’t helpful to me today, and there is nothing worse than going up a along, interminable, incline with the wind in your face, which is what happened for the last couple of hours in to Carmona.  The landscape mostly throughout the day was rolling fields, all pretty empty of their wheat, and not a great deal to see.  I think I’d been a bit louche in the morning and left late, and breakfasted in a square nearby before really setting out.  Then a nice lunch.  So, I was a bit late getting to Cordoba, just after 8:30 pm, and when I arrived the AirBnB place was locked, reception closed at 8:30 pm.  I’d evidently missed the Madame by a few minutes, but a phone call ensured that she came back tout de suite to let me. I think she had been bit keen about leaving exactly at 8:30 pm pm on the dot when a guest still hadn’t arrived.  Anyhow, she was charming, and sorted all out for me !  I had thought of staying at the Parador in Carmona, encouraged by my sister Nicola who had been there recently, and by my other experiences of Paradores.  But, it was fully booked, and so I was saved from the temptation to blow my budget on Parador luxury.  Apparentl Michael Portillo, he of the bright trousers and trains, has a house in Carmona. He’s got Spanish, Republican, Anti-Franco heritage from his father.  I think today I was the brightest thing around in my orange cycling shirt and MAMIL outfit.  I had tapas in the square.  I notice that the Spaniards drop all their nut shells, peanut shells, cigarette butts and everything else on the floor under the table where they are eating / drinking.  I feel for the waiting staff who have to clean up at the end of the day.  Towns are generally cleaned, and hosed down at night, and you see a lot of street cleaners out and about.  However, as I cycle along I can’t help but notice the amount of cans and bottles in the gullies alongside the road.  Evidently, just thrown out by people in cars passing by.  Two things.  One, I would never think of throwing rubbish out of the car window.  Would you ?  Two, I would be out organising a community litter pick up with my gloves on and a black bin bag.  I do that at home on St George’s Close, litter, detritus and then leaves in autumn.  It’s where I live, and I don’t want people coming to visit and seeing litter and leaves, and thinking what kind of place is this ?  So, I make sure it is clean and tidy. Eccentric, I know.  But, am I bovvered ?  Also, it gives me a chance to meet neighbours.  They always stop, and I doff my cap (they are mostly posh) and we share a bit of chit chat and catch up on the gossip. Gossip is a commodity to be traded.  Who told me that ?  Don’t give too much away without getting something in return.  It’s amazing what I learn.  Except the Blooms, who drive in and out of The Close in their Bentley and Jaguar and look at me as if I’m from Brum Council.   Very standoffish.  Well, I guess we don’t go to the same Synagogue….  As for the rest, they are pretty much all up for a good gossip when they stop. I give as good as I get. Having read that back to myself, I wonder what gossip (about me ?) is going on when I’m not there !?  Talking of St George’s Close, just before I came away one of the elderly neighbours died, Ysanne Churchman, aged in her upper 90’s. She was the original Grace Archer, from The Archers Radio 4, and in the fiction died in 1955 in a barn fire, the episode being broadcast on the same day as ITV started up, as a spoiler no doubt.  Anyhow, she lived in real life until 2024.  We didn’t see much of her, because she was housebound and had 24 hour care.

Wednesday 18 September - Carmona - Pilas - 50 Miles

I’m not sure why today’s ride was shorter than usual, but it meant that I didn’t have to get going until after 10 am.  This last week I haven’t done any camping, even though the weather is perfect for it.  Mostly, because it is difficult to find the right campsite in the right places in Spain, and also that quite a few of them that I looked at are already closed for the season.   Also, because simple hotels are so inexpensive in this part of Spain, and why pay 30 euro for a campsite when you can get a nice room for 40 euro ?  Which is what I did tonight in Pilas.  I worked out that where I was staying, about 35 miles west of Seville, was a repurposed Catholic seminary, turned in to a hotel.  Late 1950 / early 1960s architect low level design, very of its time, when the Church Triumphant thought that there was a never ending source of vocations and they were riding a wave. Which crashed.  But lovely.  Simple en suite room for 40 euro, and a wonderful cafeteria, bar and restaurant, where I ate magnificently, although not before 9 pm.  And when I left at 11 pm it was still buzzing and people still popping in.  So, why camp when that is on offer ?  Except to be an authentic bikepacker ?!  During the day, I passed through Seville, which I’ve been to often, including in the early 1990s for the Seville World Fair / Expo, and I recognised some of the pavilions from the Expo which seem to have survived.  I stopped and had a glass of fino and couple of tapas for lunch, and then went on further west across the Guadalquivir to Pilas, which positions me for getting to the border with Portugal at Ayamonte tomorrow, and then on Friday taking the ferry over the estuary in to Portugal. Getting out of Seville I had to cross some river bridges, and the route was not clear, so I think I ended up on the Autovia part of the bridge, and got a few pips from indignant drivers, but by the time I became aware I probably shouldn't  have been there it was safer to carry on than turn back in to the traffic.  I made it, it wasn’t actually that challenging, slow traffic and a wide shoulder for me to keep to, and no Guardia Civil around to haul me over !  Seville isn’t pretty on it’s outskirts, as so many Spanish cities are, lots of industrial estates and general drudge, and trying to cycling through all of that is exhausting and slow.  Once I was out of Seville, I began to notice that in the olive groves there were people harvesting the olives.  I had wondered, given that there are so many olive trees, whether this is done by some mechanical means, but evidently it is still done by hand, ladders, buckets and back braking labour.  Similarly, the same in the orange /mandarin  groves.  All by hand.  Hard work.  And, for the most part, I would think that the labour force is not Spanish / European, but immigrants / refugees/ migrants.  As I have come in to Andalucia, I have noticed that the generality of the population isn’t as, well, shall we say, noble/ poised/ assured / svelte looking as I saw in Madrid and environs;  and I’ve noticed. that there isn’t the same bella figura one sees further north, with a noticeable lardy tendency to some of the people down here.   There’s definitely something a bit more  peasant / campesino stock about the people here, especially in the small towns, than further north.  I guess they need to be sturdy for all that backbreaking olive and citrus fruit harvesting they have to do. Also, more evidence of immigrant people, I guess for the most part from Northern Africa.  I think Andalucia is cool, hip and desirable in Seville, Carmona etc  and some picturesque villages where the nice houses have been brought up and done up by incomers, but elsewhere it is very rural and country.  Those lovely pictures you see of white washed Andalusian villages hanging  to the hillsides doesn’t tell you about the chaotic and disorganised and dilapidated reality that you so often find there.  Lots of run down places, abandoned small factories and smallholdings,  and lots of rubbish and detritus everywhere.  Not picture perfect at all.  But masses of citrus groves, olive trees, and even some cotton fields.  I hear that one problem in the countryside in Spain is the flight to the cities by young people, leaving just the very young and the old in the villages.  I guess if you want more than olives and citrus picking, then you need to go elsewhere for opportunities.

Thursday 19 September - Pilas - Ayamonte - 70 Miles

A relatively long day in miles today, compared to what I have been doing on this trip, but mostly downhill to start with and then flat as I made my way towards Huelva and then on to the border with Portugal at Ayamonte, where I will take the ferry across to the other side on Friday morning.  Huelva is a port city, and is surrounded by smelly marshes, no doubt bird twitchers’ paradise, but not pretty and smelling of sea, rotting fish and sulphur.  And, then on further west towards Ayamonte, which is on the estuary which separates Spain and Portugal.  There is a long modern bridge, but after my bridge / autovia experience of the other day in Seville, I’ll stick to the ferry.  Which, I think, was the only way across until the bridge was built some 25 years ago.  There is no railway connection between Portugal and Spain in this part of the world as far as I can see, and if you want to go from Faro to Seville by public transport you have to go by bus.  Or go north by train to Lisbon and then on in a big loop to Seville from there. The train from Faro stops at the estuary, at Vila Real de Santo Antonio, and then you have to cross by the ferry.  I had booked a nice hotel not far from the ferry, which was really lovely and very reasonable, and ate a selection of tapas for my dinner.  In this bit of the world, southern Spain, away from the main centres of population, lodging is very reasonable and good.  I’m told the average monthly wage in Spain is 1200 Euro, although that will vary by region, but I suspect regional Andalucia is at that level, and so the local cost of living is correspondingly low.  It makes me think how inflated are our costs back in the UK.  And, you can’t get away from the fact that the disaster of Brexit, and Kamikaze Kwarteng ’s/ Librium Liz’s criminally careless budget, are to blame for a large part of the increase. Brexit especially.  It still bemuses me that those high profile individuals who were responsible for Brexit, and especially for the lies / untruths they expounded, are able to walk away without any consequences, except perhaps losing power, after having done so much damage to the public good.  My previous MP, Gisella Stuart, her of the Brexit Battle Bus and ice cream cone, cut and run at the 2019 election, afraid to face her Remain constituency who would have punished her for her fulsome support of Boris and Brexit, and is now conveniently installed in the Lords. Job for life. Oh, and still holidng a German passport so she can avoid the queues which the rest of us now have to endure. Anyhow, coming to Europe, and places like Spain, doesn’t seem so outrageously expensive these days, because our cost of living at home is so ridiculously high.

Friday 20 September - Ayamonte - Faro - 60 Miles

This morning I took the little ferry across the estuary to Portugal, a 15 minute crossing.  Very peaceful.  And then on in to Portugal, and I was reminded immediately about the cobbles that the Portuguese are so fond of and so uncomfortable for cycling, and the nutty and dangerous driving of the Portuguese drivers.  Anyhow, I only have to put up with one day of it.  I was following the coast road and EuroVelo Route 1, which hugs the coast, but so often it goes along rough tracks, and so I reverted to the N road, which, although a bit busy, was wide and had a decent margin for me to keep to, and which was more direct to Faro.  The wind was more or less to my back, and so I was bowled along. I stopped for lunch and had a skate stew, cooked with garlic and lemon which was lovely.  Portugal stops at lunchtime.  I think lunch is more important here than in Spain.  The restaurants along the road are full from 1 pm to 4 pm.  And so, after working my way to and through Faro, and then past the airport, and along the coast road, I ended up at Almancil and home for the next week.  Tomorrow is going to be going back to the airport to pick up a rental car, some shopping, some laundry, some resting, and then going in the evening to the airport to pick up David who is flying from London.  And then, on Tuesday friends Rona and Peter will arrive for a few days at the end of their motoring trip in Portugal.  I need to find a cardboard bike box so that I can pack up my bike for travel back home, probably from the local Decathlon store in Faro, but other than that it is a time to relax, unwind, and to go for long lazy lunches, walks on the beach, and then long lazy suppers !  My bike has worked perfectly, given me a comfortable ride, and I’ve had no issues with it, and I haven’t had a single puncture over this summer’s travelling.  That is because I use Schwlabe Marathon Plus tyres, the plus bit being an important puncture proof lining, and they work.  “Unplattbar”, as they say in Germany !

I have enjoyed my cycling through France and Spain.  For the most part, decent routes, decent roads, and reasonably civilised drivers, except for the Portuguese.  In France, they have invested in many Voies Vertes  along old railway lines and canals and rivers, and they often intersect, so that you can go for hundreds of miles without being on a traffic route.  In Spain, they have fewers Caminos Verdes than in France, but some, usually old railway lines, but their road infrastructure is good and often a main N road will have a very generous shoulder for tucking in to.  Country roads are quiet and peaceful.  So, I like cycling in France and Spain.  The weather in the first two weeks was variable, especially in the Pyrenees and northern Spain, but once past that it was lovely weather, sunny, not too hot, and not too much unfavourable wind.  So, I think that is it for cycling for 2024 (Berlin-Rhine-Calais; Normandy-Pyrenees-Spain-Portugal), but my mind will soon turn to wondering what I might do in 2025 !

WEEK 1   WEEK 2   WEEK 3   WEEK 4