12 October and a Spanish National Holiday, we have hired a car and yesterday went up the coast to suss out alternative winter resting places.  Until we got to Cartagena, we had seen nothing to tempt us.  Now I want to be in Cartagena.  We would be only 5 mins from the centre of an old town with a lot of history, coffee shops, plenty of opportunity for people watching and practising our Spanish.  Here in Almerimar with its large marina (around 1000 yachts) there is a fairly large British population both on boats and who live in the surrounding area.

Today we went up into the hills to a place called Ugijar.  They had been celebrating something all week, we couldn’t quite make out what.  The streets were hung with flags and decorations and lined with stalls selling the usual plastic tack, scarves, bags and sweets - the boxes of nougat included an axe and a hammer, what would that do to your teeth?!  There was a fun fair, the women were dressed in the very handsome elegant  national Andalusian costume of black skirt, white shirt, red ribbon belt, black hat and flower in the hair or else in flamenco dress, in one case teamed with trainers which didn‘t really add anything to the look.  We didn’t see anyone dancing but plenty of beer was being drunk. We went down into the old town which was lovely - simple white washed buildings, one decked out with strings of red peppers, such vivid colour.  I heard goat bells and then hooves and two guys came riding horses with others tethered behind, the lead one with the bell on. The saddles were sheepskin  they looked right cowboys and this, of course is where the wild west films were made - don’t know why they were called ‘spaghetti westerns' , should have been ‘paella westerns’.  There was a woman  trying to photograph these men and horses, she persuaded them to retrace their steps so she could get them on film, then seemed to engage the man in an argument which seemed almost staged.  The horses were skin and bone, I don’t know what they were there for.  As we were leaving, a furniture van passed and I heard violent kicking and realised, recognising the driver, that the horses must have been in the back.

There was a bull fight taking place.  The bull ring was a temporary one brought in for the occasion.  I swear I heard the bull pawing the ground and roaring as we walked around the town.  There were rather rotund gentlemen perched on the top of horses well protected and padded with thick material around them and the men themselves had protection on their legs and huge metal casings over their feet.  Many of the horses were blindfolded too and one, with a very superior looking young man on top of her, was staring transfixed at the ground and frothing at the mouth.  My British sentimentality over animals came to the fore and I felt upset for the poor creatures and for the fate of the bull.  I didn’t want to go and see the fight.  

Granada

We retraced our steps up to Ugijar, cutting  through swathes of plastic greenhouses as the hills on either side of us rise, like so many dozens of spoil heaps randomly scattered revealing rubbly sandstone through  scrubby vegetation on the surface.  The road twisted and turned and at times we were travelling along  unfinished dusty tracks.  As we got higher in the relative cool and more moist atmosphere the vegetation became greener and chestnut and other trees hung over the road. There were signs of autumn in the leaves which took me back to last year when the autumn leaves fell into the cockpit in Arklow.   A sign, as we approached the highest village in Spain proclaimed, ‘here in Trevelas you can touch the sky’ and indeed I was already thinking that I might just fall off the top of Spain. These days I feel safer in my boat than in a car or, as I experienced last night, on the 14th floor of our hotel during a thunder and lightening storm.  I opened the window to listen to the rain and experienced horrible possibility of being drawn over the railings and crashing onto the wet street below.

Big white cathedral, meal overlooking the Alhambra on the other side of the valley.  Open top bus tour

We will have to visit again.

We phoned Cartagena again today (17th October) and they are still full - we will have one last try and then have to stay here.

Off to Sussex to do a dance course and leaving Andy with lots of ready made meals.

Jinti

Jinti and Patrick,adjacent boat in the marina, at the Moors castle in nearby Almeria