Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

Early This Morning – Fox Cub Garden Visitor

I was surprised to spot this little chap in my back garden at 5 o’clock this morning.  Bleary eyed and short sighted I thought at first it was a ginger cat and I was about to shoo it off when I realised it was an urban fox cub.  He didn’t look old enough to be out on his own but he seemed confident enough when he moved on and walked down the road.

Northern Spain – Oviedo and the Kingdom of Asturias

On day three our objective was to leave the northern coast of Asturias and drive into Castilla y León with plans to visit the major cities of the region but first we would be visiting the capital city of Asturias – Oviedo.

After breakfast we settled up with the owner of the hotel, Santiago, and he invited us to return and with what I thought was a very nice touch he said that we should consider his hotel to be our home in Spain.

We took the direct route this morning on the Autovia Cantabria and although there was promising blue sky there seemed to be the constant threat of bad weather being blown in from the Bay of Biscay as grey clouds scudded in from the north. 

The route took us east at first past the industrial town of Aviles where deep quarries and massive steel works sat side by side, rather uncomfortably with green fields and grazing cattle.  Asturias was once one of the most affluent regions of Spain based on its mining and steel industries and people flocked here from other regions for employment but as with everywhere else it seems this has now changed and although the steel mills were belching smoke and the foundries looked busy, Asturias is no longer considered to be so industrially wealthy.

After only a few kilometres the road swung south and immediately the weather became more certain as we headed towards the blue skies above Oviedo and when we arrived we headed for the historical centre and quickly found ourselves in an underground car park close to the city and as we walked to the centre we passed the first of over one hundred statues that decorate the city and we started rather appropriately with the traveller.

My immediate assessment of Oviedo was that it seemed confident and relaxed and the honey coloured stone of the Plaza Mayor was welcoming and friendly except that is for the ever-present gipsy beggars with their gnarled and twisted faces like characters from a Goya painting who hang around outside cathedral doors and pester people for money as they go in and out on a sightseeing expedition.  Personally I find these people to be a downright nuisance and I don’t understand why the authorities don’t simply move them on.

Before visiting the cathedral we spotted the covered market and made our way inside to see what was on offer.  It was quite wonderful with meat and fish and vegetables and many stalls selling local produce.  While Asturias is especially known for its seafood, the most famous regional dish is fabada asturiana which is a rich stew typically made with large white beans, shoulder of pork, black sausage and spicy chorizo, which it seemed to me is a sort of French Cassoulet and we flirted for a while with purchasing a pre-packed tourist meal to take home but then realised that we could easily do this for ourselves without too much effort, came to our senses and moved on.

Oviedo is only a small city, only just scraping into the top twenty largest cities in Spain and it isn’t even the largest in Asturias so it didn’t take that long to walk around the historical centre and soon there was only one thing left to do – visit the Cathedral.  The building was severely damaged during the Spanish Civil War when the conflict more or less started here and there was fierce Nationalist oppression inflicted by General Franco but it has been restored now and has been returned to its former medieval grandeur.

Inside is the mausoleum of the King’s of Asturias and an elaborate alter piece but nothing else really stood out for me.  Except the candles!  Traditionally a votive candle is lit in memory of someone and I have always thought there is something special about lighting a beeswax candle, or even a tea light and standing back and saying a little prayer or dragging up a memory.  Sadly these little candles seem to be increasingly replaced with a box full of flickering bulbs that, having paid your money, remain lit for a while and then after a pre-determined time simply switch off.  I expect it is something to do with health and safety!  A few years ago I remember going into Florence Cathedral and the heat from the thousands of candles was completely overpowering and I am sure that a little accident could easily have led to a raging inferno!

After leaving the Cathedral and side stepping the beggars at the door we returned to the car, stopping on the way for a coffee where we sat in the pleasant sunshine and plotted the next stage of our journey – one hundred and twenty-five kilometres to the city of León in neighbouring Castilla y León, the largest of the Autonomous Communities of Spain.

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says

In fact, on account of the lack of engineering refinements on board, the whole railway journey experience seemed fraught with danger and this was well illustrated by a sign on the heavy metal doors that seemed to indicate that male passengers in particular should be careful not to trap delicate bits of their anatomy in between the closing doors as this could be very, very painful indeed.  And to emphasise this the letters can be rearranged into that well-known warning ‘tite bals nastie’.

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Northern Spain – The Ruta de Don Quixote

Don Quixote is the national glory of Spain.  No one who does not know that has the right to call himself a Spaniard.  There is a monument to him in Madrid…he was our first revolutionary.”                                                                                             Gerald Brenan – South from Granada

My previous post described a short encounter with the Ruta de Don Quixote on a drive between the neighbouring towns of Sigüenza and Atienza but this was not the first time that we had followed other parts of the route…

In 2009 we were staying in Belmonte, further south than Sigüenza and it was going to be a long day so we rose early ready for a quick start and as usual my first job was to check the weather.  The air felt fresher and from the hotel window I could see cloud to the east, which was a bit of a worry, but the lady on Spanish breakfast television seemed confident that it was going to be fine and out to the west it was clear blue and that was the direction in which we were heading. 

After breakfast and check out we packed the car and started on the one hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Toledo.   I instinctively knew that it was going to be a good day.

In the hotel there had been pictures of a castle and a row of windmills at the next town of Consuegra so as it came into view we left the main road and headed towards the top of the hill where they stood like watching sentinels overlooking the town.  From below, the castle looked magnificent but on close inspection it was in a bit of a sorry state of disrepair but from here there were terrific views over the great plain of Castile and it was easy to see why this was once a very important military place as it guarded the direct route from the south to Toledo and Madrid.  The castle was once a stronghold of the Knights of San Juan, the Spanish branch of the Knight’s Hospitallers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Now we were on the ‘Ruta de Don Quixote’ which is the golden thread that binds the Castilian tourist industry together in a ribbon of castles and windmills stretching all the way from Cuenca to Toledo.

As well as the castle, Consuegra is famous for its windmills which remained in use until the beginning of the 1980s.  They were originally built by the Knights and were used to grind the grain that was grown on the plain and they were passed down through the generations of millers from fathers to sons. The eleven Consuegra windmills are some of the best examples of Spanish windmills in Castilla-La Mancha and although it was a little cool at the top of the hill it was a good time to see them because there were very few visitors this early in the morning.

Don Quixote is a novel written by the seventeenth century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and is regarded as the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age.  It is the story of a man who believes that he is a knight, and recounts his adventures as he rights wrongs, mistakes peasants for princesses, and  “tilts at windmills,” mistakenly believing them to be evil giants.  As one of the earliest works of modern western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.

In 2002 a panel of one hundred leading world authors declared Don Quixote to be the best work of fiction ever written, ahead even of works by Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.  Cervantes has also been credited with shaping modern literary style, and Don Quixote has been acclaimed as “the first great novel of world literature”. 

Since publication in 1605 it is reputed to be the most widely read and translated book on the planet after the Bible. I tried to read it once but found it rather heavy going so gave up quite quickly but as we drove along I resolved to have another attempt upon returning home.

Weekly Photo Challenge: UP

Trogir, Croatia and the Tower of Terror!

The first third of the climb was straightforward and uneventful up the sort of staircase that we have negotiated many times but then the stone staircase stopped abruptly at a first level and the next part of the climb was up a set of precarious wooden steps that had a handrail but nothing else to prevent a careless visitor falling through and ending up in a tangle of broken bones on the stone floor at the bottom of the tower.

Worse than that was the prospect of slipping and falling the other way which would have involved a fall through an open stone window and onto the court yard below with little real prospect of survival.  During the fatal fall however there would have been some excellent views because the higher the steps climbed the view over the roof tops towards the sea on one side and the mountains on the other got better and better.

This was more like the Tower of Terror than the Tower of Trogir.  At the top of the hazardous wooden stairs was a second level where the bells were and then some even more dangerous iron stairs to negotiate to complete the climb to the very top of the tower which involved a struggle through a small opening without any handrails at all and which opened out into the final level where there was time to enjoy the spectacular views and to contemplate and reflect on just how perilous this climb was and to worry about getting back down again.

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Northern Spain – Sigüenza, the Alcazar and the Plaza Mayor

The soporific combination of a dark room and a quiet street with only whispered footsteps outside meant that we slept until quite late and were only woken when the fire in the corner of the room cranked into life at nine o’clock.  This didn’t matter however because breakfast wasn’t served until half past.

The breakfast turned out to be quite excellent consisting of tostado con tomate, ham, egg and cheese, pancakes and Madeira cake all served fresh.  The only problem that arose was with the tea and this I concluded was a consequence of the absence of English guests staying at the Posada.  I was offered green, peppermint or a variety of different fruit teas but no English breakfast or simple black.  We eventually established what it was that I wanted and I felt bad about that when the waitress was sent out hurriedly to the shops to buy some.  After she returned I finally got my pot of tea but it was served luke warm and I was forced to conclude that in remote parts of Spain they are not very good at making tea!  It didn’t spoil the breakfast though.

It was mid morning by the time we left the hotel and there was a simple choice – up the hill to the Alcazar or down to the Cathedral.  We decided to start at the top of the town and make our way to the bottom.  Lined on each side with caramel coloured houses with terracotta tiled roofs, the Calle de Valencia followed the line of the old medieval town wall and half way to the castle we passed through the Puerto del Porto Mayor which was once the main gateway into the narrow streets of the old town and from here there was a final twisting climb to the Plaza del Castillo and the Parador Hotel.

The Parador Hotels are classy places well beyond our limited budget and can be found all over Spain.  These were originally a State owned chain and were luxury hotels in old castles, palaces, convents, monasteries and other historic buildings that were established to promote quality tourism, to act as guardian of the national and artistic heritage of Spain and to assist poorer regions to attract more visitors.  They are no longer owned by the State and during the recession have begun to suffer financial difficulties but there didn’t appear to be a drastic shortage of guests this morning.

The present day castle was built in the twelfth century but there has been a fortress here since the Visigoths built the first in the fifth century.  Later as the Northern Kings led the Reconquest of Spain the Moors constructed a new castle on the same site but in 1124, the crusading ecclesiastic knight, Bernardo de Agen took possession of the castle and began the Christian repopulation and the building of the Christian Alcazar.

The castle was extended and remodelled at various times between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries but was partially destroyed in 1811 during the French occupation. It again suffered damage during the Carlist Wars and during the Spanish Civil War when Sigüenza became part of the front line fighting during the Aragon campaign. It had to be almost completely rebuilt after that so although it now suffers the indignity of being a hotel at least we have the Parador initiative to thank for what we see today.

It was possible to walk around parts of the old external areas but there is no getting away from the fact that the interior of the old castle is a hotel so with little or nothing to see except the reception desk and a couple of reproduction suits of armour we didn’t stay long and made our way down a narrow stone street towards the Plaza Mayor.

The weather was proving very inconsistent and there was no way of confidently predicting which way it would go as it changed without warning through intermittent periods of sunshine, cloud, blue sky and then squally showers when rain fell like tiny lead fishing weights and the temperature fluctuated wildly.  To dodge the showers we reached the pedestrianised fifteenth century Plaza Mayor via a number of churches, historic houses and artisans craft shops until we eventually reached the central square of the town which although wouldn’t get into my personal top five Plaza Mayor was very pleasant indeed with renaissance architecture, balconies and covered colonnades, palaces and the magnificent cathedral with history etched into every stone and dripping like honey off the walls.

There was no activity in the Plaza today and it was too cold for the bars to set up their tables outside so it didn’t take us long to wander through the stone pillars and across the cobbles and we left the square and made our way to the cathedral which was where we were going next.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

Foreign Currency:

The euro is useful because it has simplified travel to Europe but I miss the old pre-euro currencies. To have a wallet full of romantic and exciting sounding notes made you feel like a true international traveller. I liked the French franc and the Spanish peseta and the Greek drachma of course but my absolute favourite was the Italian lira simply because you just got so many.

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Northern Spain – Car Hire and Madrid to Sigüenza

Despite the ambition to visit as much of Spain as possible this was the first visit to the peninsular in nearly two years since the previous trip to Extremadura in May 2011.  Our destination this time was Castilla-La Mancha and the medieval town of Sigüenza in the Province of Guadalajara halfway between Madrid and the capital city of the Autonomous Community of Aragon – Zaragoza.

As the Easyjet plane flew south across France I wondered what changes there might be.  Since our last visit the economic crisis had after all become more severe with a collapse in the property market, dangerously high levels of unemployment and Government imposed austerity measures to tackle the problem of previous over spending.  There had been mass demonstrations in the major cities and the ever present threat of public sector strikes that might possibly affect airline travel.  On the positive side there was the promise of cheaper prices in hotels, bars and restaurants but this happy prospect had been partly snatched away by a suddenly weak Pound against the Euro which had surprised me because I thought that it was the Euro that was in trouble?

There was also the weather.  In the UK we were in the grip of an Arctic winter that had stretched uninvited into March and all this Russian weather had pushed the Gulf Stream south so whilst it should have been over Northern Europe delivering wind and rain this was much further south and smothering Iberia with unseasonal cold, wet weather so that even Spain was struggling to find some blue sky Spring weather.

There was thick impenetrable cloud for the entire journey but closer to Madrid there were occasional breaks with welcome puddles of sunshine like searchlights in reverse scanning the green and copper countryside and chasing the gloomy shadows away from the ground below and when we landed there was predominantly blue sky and a respectable temperature.

After completing the arrival formalities the first job was to find the Firefly car hire office which being a budget operation didn’t have a desk in the main terminal.  It was in the car park outside and there was only a short queue which should have made it a speedy process.

Unfortunately in front of me was a German customer who was extremely distrustful about the whole car hire process and he had a barrage of prepared questions to get through - “How many kilometres were on the clock? Was it unlimited mileage? When was the car last serviced? Summer or Winter tyres? Any bodywork damage? Fully insured or not?” so the process began to drag out and the needle on my patience tank began to drop towards low!

To be fair I could understand his concerns because of all the places I have hired a rental car it is in Germany where they have the biggest tricks and extra charges for unsuspecting customers.  I was once seriously ripped off  at Kahlrsrue-Baden for the cost of Winter tyres when really they should have been included in the basic price.

The clerk dealt with him patiently and was careful to explain that it really didn’t matter about damage because he was hiring an old car and had purchased top-up insurance which covered him for absolutely anything from a stone chip to a direct hit from a cruise missile.  Eventually he rather reluctantly signed the paperwork, took the keys and left the office and at last it was my turn.

I had barely started the process when he was back.  He had found some scratches on the car and he wanted the clerk to inspect the vehicle and absolve him from responsibility.  She explained again that it didn’t matter because he was fully insured but he ignored the reassurances and almost man-handled her out of the office and through the window I could see him going through the whole unnecessary procedure of pointing out every little mark and my patience needle hovered close to the red zone!

Fortunately she was back in the office before it reached empty and not being as distrustful as the German I completed the formalities in just a few minutes and had the keys to a Ford Fiesta in bay 60.  Well, if the German had been allocated this one then it would have taken the rest of the day to identify and agree all the marks and scratches because this poor old thing had some serious parking injuries front and back but trusting the hire car company and confident that I was fully insured we just loaded up and drove away.

For a few kilometres the Satnav refused to acknowledge the fact that it was in Spain but it was easy enough even without satellite assistance because all we needed to find was the A2 Autovia to Zaragoza and Barcelona and the entry slip-road was directly outside the exit from the Barajas Airport.

Despite the optimistic weather on arrival the prospects were suddenly plunged into reverse and ahead of us were massive banks of slate grey cloud towering up in giant layers like the inside of a medieval cathedral.

We drove for several kilometres as far as Guadalajara along a perfect motorway surface, probably financed by cheap loans that the country cannot now easily repay, through a ribbon of industrial units, shopping outlets and roadside diners to the left hand side and to the right nothing but the breath-taking vastness of La Mancha and then, once past the high rise domestic suburbs of the Provincial capital we left the urban landscape behind and drove into open countryside with high hills, jagged rocky outcrops, holm oak forests and green meadows all liberally decorated with dainty Spring flowers and as we drove the weather improved and eventually we began to see road signs for Sigüenza.

Alternative Twelve Treasures of Spain – Segovia, Aqueduct, Alcazar and Cathedral

“Here were churches, castles, and medieval walls standing sharp in the evening light, but all dwarfed by that extraordinary phenomenon of masonry, the Roman aqueduct, which overshadowed the whole…’The Aqueduct’, said the farmer, pointing with his whip, in case by chance I had failed to notice it.” Laurie Lee - ‘As I walked out one Sunny Morning’

The “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” was a contest/poll that was conducted by the Spanish Television Company Antena 3 and the radio broadcaster Cope.  The final results were announced on 31^st December 2007.  I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the eight out of the twelve that I have visited and having completed that I thought I might come up with a personal alternative twelve.

Top of my personal list is my current favourite city in Spain – Segovia in Castilla y Leon…

On a first visit there we walked out into the sociable main square and followed a street adjacent to the Cathedral and walked in the direction of the Alcázar, which, by some measures, is the most visited castle in Spain.  The route took us through narrow streets, past artisan craft shops and churches and eventually brought us out at the north of the city on the top of a rocky outcrop that was the location of the fortress that was begun in the twelfth century and was subsequently occupied by a succession of Castilian monarchs from Alfonso X to Phillip II and Charles III.  In the nineteenth century it was destroyed by fire but was restored to its present magnificent status soon after.

Segovia and the Spanish tourist board would have us believe that the Alcázar was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland and Disneyworld but there is no real evidence to support this. In fact it is more likely that the famous icon of the Disney empire was inspired principally by Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria and several picturesque French palaces, most notably Louis XIV’s Versailles although I like to think that it is also quite possible that the Alcázar in Segovia may also have been an important influence as well.

The Alcazar of Segovia above and Walt Disney Castle below…

We purchased tickets to visit the Alcázar and paid a little extra to climb to the top of the Torre de Juan II (total price €6 each). The castle was busy with a coach full of Japanese tourists and several school visits so we had to try and arrange our journey through the rooms and exhibits to try and avoid the busy sections and the crowds.

After visiting the state rooms and the armouries we ended our visit with a climb of three hundred and twenty steps up the spiral staircase to the top of the tower where we were rewarded for our efforts with fabulous views over the city and the surrounding countryside.

Leaving the Alcázar gardens we followed the old city wall along its northern side where there were good views over the river valley below and a barren plain stretching away in infinity towards mountains in the north. The city walls were not so impressive as those in Ávila however and eventually we left the old city through the Puerta de San Cebrián and followed a small road past the Santa Cruz monastery and the City’s bullring to the nearby village of San Lorenzo.

Here there was a splendid church in a main square lined on every side with medieval houses and little shops. I imagine that this pretty little place becomes quite congested in the summer but today it was unhurried and charming and the local people paid no attention to us as they went about their business.

Leaving the village we returned to Segovia through a modern residential development and entered the City at the Plaza de la Artilleria, the bus station underneath the Aqueduct and from where we roamed leisurely through the streets past Romanesque churches and Renaissance palace residencies and older medieval buildings and it was by now time for a beer and a tapas so we selected a bar with tables in the sun and sat and enjoyed watching the residents of Segovia as they went about their business of the day in probably the same way that they have for a thousand years. A walk around the square, a sit down, a chat, a walk around the square, a sit down, a chat and so on and so on.

If the Alcázar isn’t enough for one city the Aqueduct is the most recognised and famous historical symbol of Segovia. It was built at the end of first to early second century AD by the Romans during their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula to bring water from the Río Frío about eighteen kilometres away and requiring an elevated section in its final kilometer from the Sierra de Guadarrama to the walls of the old town. This is supported by an engineering achievement of one hundred and sixty-six arches and one hundred and twenty pillars constructed on two levels. It is twenty eight metres high and constructed with over twenty thousand large, rough-hewn granite blocks, which are joined without mortar or clamps and have remained in place for two thousand years.

We liked the Aqueduct and looked all round it from every possible angle, it is one of those structures that make you appreciate just how brilliant the Romans were. I never tire of visiting these ancient structures, I feel privileged to able to enjoy them and the sense of wonderment is never diminished no matter how many I see.

There was only one more thing to do in Segovia so after a refreshment break we went to the Cathedral to finish off the day. The building was completed in 1577 and is regarded as the World’s last great Gothic Cathedral. There was an admission charge again, which seems to becoming quite normal, so we paid the €3 and then entered what I suggest is quite possibly the coldest cathedral in Spain and probably all of Europe.

We were inappropriately dressed for sub-zero temperatures and although the cathedral was well worth the admission charge and the visit it was too cold to enjoy it so we sprinted around the naves and the chapels with rather indecent haste and were glad to come about again into the sunshine with only seconds to go before hypothermia set in.

Later in the agreeable afternoon sunshine we needed to warm up so we ambled around the pretty little streets, bought some wine from a little shop near to the hotel and then went back to the room to drink it and look out from our balcony over the square at the late afternoon activity. The Sercotel Infanta Isabel was a good hotel in an excellent location and we enjoyed the setting and the atmosphere as we drank our bottle of local Spanish wine and thoughts turned to dining arrangements for the evening.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Colour

The Washing Lines of Marino, Italy

The streets between the houses are like deep gullies made brilliant by vibrant washing lines strung outside windows like bunting as though in anticipation of a parade or a carnival, stretching across the streets dripping indiscriminately and swaying gently backwards and forwards above the secret doorways and back alleys.

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