Just like riding a bike
Just like riding a bike. Writing the blog that is…
This is the first post since the end of August. And I’m going to have to think carefully what to put in and what to leave out.
I suppose the first thing to cover is our few days’ break in Cádiz.
It has been five years to the month since the last time we went to Cádiz.
And amazingly not all that much has changed. I am quite noted for having a good memory for places, much to the occasional annoyance of members of the family.
But sometimes of late it seemed very difficult to recall places after a few years. However my few days’ break renewed my sense of geography for the place.
It helps that the city is quite compact, being on a spit of land heading out into the sea.
I read that it was originally two separate islands with a canal in between the two.
Over the years the canal silted up and it became the city we see now.
It’s got quite a history too. It’s actually the oldest city in Spain and Western Europe and was first settled by the Phoenicians in around 3000 BC.
It was originally called Gadir. The Romans knew it as Gades and there is a statue to the goddess of that name in the city. In Arabic it was Qādis from which the current name was derived.
The hotel we stayed at had previously been a convent. Rooms were arranged on two floors surrounding a courtyard open to the sky.
It was very comfortable and if we stay in Cádiz again I think we’d look to go there again as well.
We did a bit of walking.
In fact our first full day involved walking more than 22,000 steps and probably buggered my back for the rest of the visit.
In that first day we did not stir from the middle of the town itself.
The isthmus is surrounded on three sides by water. Not surprisingly. At the very far end you find the castle of San Sebastián.
Last time we visited we couldn’t go round because it had been closed because of COVID.
While we were there the fog rolled in. And I have some very strange photographs of the rather prominent lighthouse disappearing in the mist.
El Castillo de San Sebastián when the fog rolled in. The lighthouse is not much use in this. Photo by author
And when we walked back to shore, if we hadn’t known the city was there, we might have thought we were walking to nowhere.
For a while, at least, it actually kept the temperatures relatively sensible. We had high hopes it would be less warm and less humid than here.
We were, of course, disappointed. There wasn’t much in it. Much of the time the winds were coming from inland, which, as I said in a previous post, is the warm direction. Their Poniente is like our Levante and vice versa.
The second day we thought of visiting a place called Chiclana. We visited it last time we were here and it is the destination of a tram-train that had been built but not opened on our previous visit.
Easy peasy. Just use the ticket machines and off we go. We’d left 15 minutes before the tram went.
Wrong.
Apparently no place called Chiclana according to the ticket machines, so we got in the queue for the main ticket office.
You took a ticket and waited your turn. The tickets were divided into:
- Go now
- Go today
- Go another day
- Questions or something like that
Which made me assume that they would do the ‘go now’ in preference to everything else.
Wrong. Otra vez. So why did they divide them in the first place? Why have a cloak? Oh it’s up to its usual tricks. I’m sure I said I haven’t a clue.
The tram train went and we still hadn’t bought tickets. I decided we should go to Jerez de la Frontera instead as I didn’t fancy waiting an hour for the next one. Our number was finally called and some guy slipped in beforehand and started talking to the operator.
The operator gestured to us to say, “Won’t be a moment,” so we waited. As the time for the train to Jerez approached, I started to get really annoyed and wandered up and said, “Our train goes in 3 minutes.”
It was amusing to see the look on the operator’s face as he shoved the person making inquiries to one side and very quickly gave us our tickets. I think he got the impression we weren’t very pleased…
Just like riding a bike.
By the way L googled the question about tickets to Chiclana.
And apparently because there is more than one stop in Chiclana, you need to know the name of the stop, the main one of which happens to be Nuestra Señora de los Remedios.
But without the Chiclana…
Obvious really. Not.
I remembered many of the places in Jerez as well.
But we did find a beer bar that we hadn’t found last time.
And we had lunch of patatas fritas con queso y bacon.
It was lovely and there were lots of them but somehow we forced ourselves to finish it off.
If you didn’t know, Jerez is the home of sherry. And if I had had any sense I would have left all the different versions of ‘Jerez’ the dictation programme can’t spell.
It’s obviously having a funny day because it’s not spotting I keep changing the damn thing!
After lunch we had a wander around the Alcázar. Which is the 12th-century Moorish fortress.
Don’t remember that being open last time we were there, and maybe that had been shut through COVID as well.
After a very nice day we returned to the station and our transport woes continued.
To cut matters short we had what appeared to be a 10-minute wait for the train turn into a train that departed an hour late.
I’ve not left myself very much time for any other things but I will just mention the cycle race.
La Vuelta a España.
It is apparently the second time it visited Estepona, the first being four years ago although I don’t remember it.
And we saw the time trial in the junior event in Santander this time last year.
Stage 19 left Vélez-Málaga in the morning last Friday, came along the coast, headed inland through Ronda, then down to the coast at San Pedro.
From San Pedro it came along the A7, cut through into Estepona, down to the port, back up around Avenida Andalucía, and then took one of it’s biggest climbs of the year up to Peñas Blancas.
Which is basically the big mountain you can see if you look north from our terraza.
And we got to see a bit of the action. It’s probably the closest I’ve been to any major sporting event and it was a less-than-3-minute walk up to the roundabout at the top of the road.
Just like riding a bike.
Which is, of course, what it was.
I don’t think I’ve left myself any more time, certainly any more energy, so I’m going to call it a day, which is vaguely better than calling it a ferret.
Until next time.
