Towards the end of August we had a visit from Tom, Emily and Rory. On the first day, with Emily’s nose fixed firmly to the legal grindstone, we took the ‘boys’ off to a garden centre near Swindon. ‘That’s a bit harsh‘, I hear you cry, ‘what did they do wrong to deserve that particular fate?‘ Ahh, but this wasn’t just any old common-or-garden garden centre. This was a garden centre with a petting farm, a butterfly room and a reptile house! All you had to do was cough up a few bob and fight your way through an enormous warehouse full of tat to find the way in. As we’d somehow managed to pick a lovely day, and most of the animals appeared to be quite sociable (once they’d sussed that we had food) it was an altogether pleasant experience.
The following day, with Emily’s nose temporarily removed from the grindstone, we headed off to the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWSR for short). Despite having lived here for 17 years this was an experience that we’d carelessly missed – more fool us, because it was an excellent day out. What boy between the ages of nearly three and 72 doesn’t just love steam trains? I think that even the girls may have enjoyed themselves.
Not their real names of course but, knowing that this blog is so widely read (I think that at the last count I had four regular subscribers), Veronique* and Sebastian* opted to tick the ‘no publicity’ box and I agreed to hide their true identities from an inquisitive world!
Anyway, I’ve known Sebastian* from the age of 14, and although for various reasons we’ve lost contact from time to time, its one of those relationships where one falls straight back into a relaxed friendship notwithstanding the passage of time. Having met up with them several times over the past 18 months they kindly invited us to spend a few days with them in their home in the Bordeaux area in August.
Although the prospect of travelling is a little more daunting these days, the reality seems to be that systems are in place to provide help where its needed; so once again we requested, and received, Special Assistance at both Bristol and Bordeaux airports and even the Sleazyjet flight was painless.
Veronique* and Sebastian’s* lovely home in Salles is both stylish and comfortable, and to say that they made us welcome would be the understatement of the époque. For five days we were chauffeured hither and thither, wined and dined in considerable style and generally treated like visiting royalty. ‘No more than you deserve‘ I hear you say, but frankly it was the most relaxing and enjoyable of experiences and we are both profoundly grateful. Thank you V* and S*, you are true friends.
Holiday endings are always a bit sad (take a listen to End of a Holiday by Fairport Convention) but we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that everyone had a good time and the promise that we’d do it all over again next year. So, farewells said, the family headed off to their flights and we retraced our route along the Algarve coastline back into Spain and made our way towards the site of the Roman city of Italica. Keeping off the motorway as much as possible we again noticed the profusion of stork nests that adorn the tops of many electricity pylons along the way. It seems that there’s an active waiting list for any high platform within reasonable flying distance of a stream, river or lake – suitable for families only, of course.
Italica was the first Roman city founded on the Iberian Peninsula in 206 BC. Unfortunately most early traces of the settlement are well and truly buried beneath the modern day town of Santiponce, so the remains that are accessible (without upsetting the town’s residents by demolishing their homes) are from the time of Hadrian (117-138 BC).
Those Romans certainly knew how to build places that last
That said, what’s on show, consisting mainly of remains of large public buildings, is pretty impressive. The pièce de résistance, (or caratteristica più importante o impressionante as they would probably never have said in roman) is the moderately well-preserved amphitheatre which, with a modicum of CGI assistance, starred as ‘The Well of Dragons’ in Game of Thrones. Fortunately there were no dragons on duty at the site during our visit, which provided a convenient stopping point on our journey around Seville towards Carmona.
Just look what those naughty dragons have done to the place!
We chose Carmona for our two-day stay prior to flying home because it’s more or less equidistant between Seville and Cordoba, plus we wanted to stay in the lovely parador that sits at the top of the town, overlooking the plain to the east. Once we’d navigated our hire car through the narrow lanes leading up to the parador, the hotel didn’t disappoint. History, comfort and elegance all rolled up into one. We took a couple of evening strolls down through the town, enjoying the warmth and ambience, and the walk back up the hill to the parador wasn’t too bad once I’d been given beer and oxygen ……….Cordoba had been on Denise’s wish list for some time – and for good reason as its a jewel in the Andalusian crown. The ‘must see’ bit at the top of our itinerary (and, as it turned out, on everybody else’s) was the Mezquita or Mosque-Cathedral, which would be worth a blog all of its own – but you’ll have to make do with a few photos and, if you want to know more, a link to Wikipedia.
Now, everyone knows that this one was sung by Cliff and The Shadows, but do you know in what year it came out, and can you name anyone else who starred in the film? (Answer at the bottom of the page; you get the idea).
Our holiday villa on the outskirts of Guia near Albufiera on the Algarve coast turned out to be a really good choice; a ‘Goldilocks’ result – the location, accommodation and facilities were all ‘just right’. The ‘Northern’ Ewbanks arrived safely on the Saturday, and once the usual ritual of ‘who has which room’ was completed (no problems there as they were all excellent) we settled down to seven days of wall-to-wall sunshine, a great deal of time spent in the pool (especially the junior contingent) and on the nearby beach, and some good food and drink.To be perfectly honest, there’s not much else to say about the week that followed. It’s probably best to let the photos speak for themselves.
The song and film came out in 1963, and probably the only actor that most people are likely to remember is Una Stubbs.
So today we’re off to sunny Spain (and Portugal) ……………… you get one point for remembering who sang it and another for recalling what year. (Answer further down the page). Five points deducted from anyone under the age of 60 who gets the correct answer – you must have Googled it!
The plan for the Ewbank ++ family getaway this year was a week in a villa in The Algarve, but Denise and I decided to add a few days to each end of the break by flying out to Seville and driving the 200 or so miles across to Albufiera – then at the end of the week returning via Carmona and Cordoba.
With life in general, and travel in particular, getting a little bit more taxing these days, we asked for Special Assistance for our outward and return journeys via Gatwick – and I have to say that the system worked extremely well, taking much of the stress and exhaustion out of the ‘airport experience’. Given that the Sleazy Jet departure gate was a good mile from the terminal, the option of sitting smugly in a golf buggy while fellow travelers dive out of your path is highly recommended.
Arriving in Seville, and with the temperature gauge in our hire car reading 41º, we drove the 50 or so kilometers to our overnight accommodation in the village of Paterna del Campo – to find Pension La Ruta well and truly locked up with no signs of life. Step forward Denise with an opportunity to exercise her mastery of Spanish in a telephone call to the owner, and hey presto (or hola pronto as they say in this part of the world) and we were settled for the night.
Not one of our photos – I pinched this one off the net.
The drive eastwards towards Portugal took us via the town of Niebla and its ‘historic castillo’ (aren’t all castles historic?) which was worth a stop and a wander, though the town has encroached on the castillo to the point that we struggled to get a decent view for a photo. Heading on into Portugal we made a point of staying off the motorway to avoid the tolls, and I was struck once again by the vast number of used car dealerships that seem to line just about every main road. If/when you next visit the country keep an eye out – its staggering!
For our first two nights in Portugal we stayed at Hotel Capela Das Artes, a converted listed building set in a six acre olive grove about 10 minutes drive from the beaches of Albufiera. Despite the urban setting it lived up to its self-proclaimed status as ‘an oasis of peace and calm’ and we enjoyed the slightly quirky combination of antique buildings and furnishings and modern comforts. Whilst having a good nose around we were intercepted and given a guided tour by the equally quirky owner, Angel Nuñez Ecchazú, an Argentinian doctor who bought the place as a ruin about 20 years ago and set about transforming it. Interesting man and interesting place.As often seems to occur when we’re on holiday at the end of May. it happened to be my birthday (spooky that!), so I was able to celebrate with some of the family at a lovely restaurant overlooking the sea at Albufiera on the eve of taking over our holiday villa in Guia.
I don’t recognise the old fart on the left of this picture – any ideas?
(Sylvia Vrethammar in 1974 – if you really wanted to know).
The thing about blogging, and I recognise that not every blogger subscribes to this point of view, is that it really helps if you have something worthwhile to blog about. Now, it certainly isn’t the case that we’ve just sat on our backsides and done absolutely nothing since returning from Spain twenty something months ago, but in all truthfulness there really hasn’t been too much to blog about – or perhaps more to the point, I just haven’t felt the urge to put fingers to keyboard.
‘But what about Stags on Tour 2023?‘, I hear you cry. ‘Didn’t that memorable adventure get your creative juices flowing?‘. Well, of course it did, but for some inexplicable reason I just couldn’t be arsed to sit down and write about it at the time, and as the months slipped past the passage of time started to become more of an obstacle than an incentive. Still, one of the wonders of this ‘internet thingy’ is the ability to play all sorts of tricks, such as backdating a blog and pretending that it was written months ago – rather like handing in your homework a week late and convincing your teacher that it really was in on time! So a short account of Stags on Tour 2023 will magically appear shortly. Anyway, to business. This year, the Famous Five (David, Jane, Denise, John and Finn the dog) decided to go exploring in South Wales. Perhaps, given the weather we’ve had so far this year, thinking that we’d be ‘going topless’ in early April was a touch ambitious, but in the end the rain held off for much of the time, and we were able to feel the wind in our hair and the sun on our faces when the weather allowed. This year it was the turn of the ‘White Stag Team’ to set the route and do the bookings, so the itinerary looked like this:
Day 1. Home to The Gower Peninsula. Staying overnight at the Kings Head in Llangennith.
Day 2. Llangennith to Pendine Sands via Kidwelly Castle. Staying overnight at Caban.
Day 3. Pendine to Manorbier with lunch in Tenby and staying overnight at the Castlemead Country House.
Day 4. Manorbier to home, skirting the northern edge of the Bannau Brycheiniog (that’s Brecon Beacons to you and me) National Park.
Tuesday 2nd April dawned reasonably dry and clear, so after meeting up with the Green Stag Team just off the A417 we headed westward around Gloucester and into The Forest of Dean. The Green Stag had their top off, so before long we followed suit and were enjoying the gentle ‘burble’ of 16 cylinders singing in unison. All would have been well if the route I’d chosen hadn’t slavishly followed the A465 ‘Heads of the Valleys’ road from Abergavenny to Neath, which just happens currently to be the largest civil engineering project in the western world! Well, perhaps I exaggerate just a touch; but believe me, if you want to enjoy free-flowing, open-top motoring – pick another route.
Arriving on the Gower, our route took us to The Mumbles where we’d hoped to enjoy the allegedly stunning scenery, but unfortunately by this time the rain was falling, so after a short walk and coffee stop we made our way to Llangennith and the King’s Arms. Comfortable accommodation and a bar within STAGgering (see what I did there?) distance made this a good choice; so Day One’s objective was achieved with the troops all in good order.
Day Two started with a visit to Kidwelly Castle which, I must admit, I’d never previously heard of. Famed for having been one of the most powerful castles in Wales, to say nothing of having featured in the opening scene of ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, it’s well worth a visit if you happen to be passing (which, to be honest is unlikely). Our next stop was Pendine Sands, which had its moments of fame in the 1920’s when the seven mile long beach became the location of choice for those brave enough to make attempts on the world land speed record. Rivalry between Malcolm Campbell and John Parry-Thomas saw the record pushed to 174mph until, in 1927, Parry-Thomas was tragically killed when his car overturned at more than 170mph. We stayed in the brand new, and quite comfortable Caban, which sits alongside The Museum of Speed, right on the beach.
A room with a view, or what?
Unsurprisingly, the Museum’s focus is the history of the various speed record attempts, but most importantly it’s the usual location for ‘Babs’, Parry-Thomas’s record-breaking car, which after the fatal crash lay buried in the sands until it was unearthed in 1969 and subjected to a 16 year-long restoration. Unfortunately our visit coincided with the car’s absence for some essential repairs – shame they didn’t think to tell us that before we paid our entrance fee!Day Three was dry and sunny for our short journey to Tenby which, I confidently informed my traveling companions, I had last visited on a family holiday in 1955 – aged three. If the town looked a tad unfamiliar to me it was probably unsurprising as I’ve subsequently discovered that the holiday was in Teignmouth; so, wrong town, wrong county and wrong country, but otherwise a very understandable mistake. Our accommodation that evening in Manorbier was a bit of a mixed bag. Clearly trying to live up to its ‘country house‘ name, it’s obviously tried hard to cultivate a ‘shabby chic’ atmosphere – well, they got the first bit spot-on, but chic it definitely was not. Having said which the evening meal they provided was excellent.
Our journey home on Day Four was pretty uneventful. We deliberately chose a more northerly return route to avoid the roadworks on the Heads of the Valleys road, and this took us through some wonderful countryside skirting the Brecon Beacons. I had a momentary panic as we passed Sennybridge Military Training Area until I remembered that it was just a 40 year-old memory and I’d no longer have to dig innumerable trenches and traipse across endless sodden hillsides while muttering those memorable words ‘if it ain’t raining, it ain’t training’. Arriving back in Gloucestershire Stags on Tour 2024 ended ‘happily ever after’ with the sun shining, the cars purring and The Famous Five already thinking ahead to their next adventure and what trouble we might get into……… I’m looking forward to it already.
For the final few days of our trip we decided to stay at a campsite at Comillas about 30 kilometres west of Santander on Spain’s northern coast.. On arrival we found that the site we’d chosen wouldn’t open for another few days, so we spent the night wild-camping on the sea front in Comillas. Lovely beach and the port still has plenty of old-world charm despite having a large number of what we presumed to be holiday apartments. In the height of the holiday season I imagine the place must get packed. Denise nearly got the swim she’d been pining for but the tide and undertow was a little too strong. We ended up spending three nights on a very nice campsite about five kilometers away which fortunately had a pool.The 120 kilometre drive from Comillas to Bilbao is fairly uninteresting, though we noticed, not for the first time, that the woods and hillsides are heavily dominated by eucalyptus trees which were originally planted for the local pulping industry but have spread and obviously thrive in the warm and damp climate of the northern coast. The fact that they are now out of control is increasingly being recognised by the Spanish authorities for the threat they pose to native species and the increased fire risk. An obvious and worrying example of the law of unintended consequencess.
We stayed our last night in a camperstop high on a hill above Bilbao with superb views of the city. We started our 2019 trip to Portugal there but this time it was virtually full and we were fortunate to get a slot. In the afternoon we took the local bus down into the old part of the city to have a wander and enjoy an icecream while sitting on the embankment and watching the world go by.The ferry port is only about 20 kilometres from the camperstop but we left in plenty of time and were among the first in the queue for the ferry. – which inevitably meant that we were among the last to board! The one consolation was that I had a nice conversation with the owner of this beautiful Aston Martin DB3S. It looked to me to be in fabulous condition but he was taking it back to UK for a complete, year-long, rebuild – I suppose you can afford to do that when your car is worth £5-6 million………
From Zamora we headed east towards Valladolid, but as our route took us through Tordesillas we decided to check the place out. During one of our earlier stops we’d got into conversation with a guy who explained why Tordesillas, which virtually nobody has ever heard of, played a vital part in the history of the modern world.It seems that back in the fifteenth century, whilst explorers from a number of European nations were setting out to find, invade and plunder any lands that they came across, Spain and Portugal pulled a sneaky one and met at Tordesillas to carve up the New World between them – getting one over on France, England etc. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, effectively gave the land that is now Brazil to Portugal and allowed Spain to lay claim to the rest of South America. Of course the other nations took exception to the treaty and totally ignored it – but if you’ve ever wondered why Brazil, alone among all the South American nations, speaks Portuguese- it’s all down to The Treaty of Tordesillas.Heading north again we took a back road through some wonderful countryside and past the village of Tamara de Campos, which is another of those communities that boast a church that’s totally out of proportion to its size.
The impressive Iglesia de San Hipólito at Tamara de Campos.
We stopped overnight at Fromista, which is on one of the acknowledged routes of the Camino de Santiago, and enjoyed a drink at a small bar populated by a number of footsore pilgrims. Enjoyed, that is, until we were charged nine euros for two small beers! It seems that The Church isn’t the only institution that’s happy to take advantage of the devout!
I couldn’t bring myself to include a picture of overpriced beers – so here’s one of a nearby irrigation canal instead ….
We stayed one night in a camperstop in Zamora. It was fairly busy with space for about twenty vans and located only about half a mile from the old part of the city. Like most of the historic locations we’ve visited Zamora was built on an outcrop of rock which is surmounted by a citadel/fort that gives views out over the surrounding countryside. Plus, of course, there’s the usual large church or cathedral – though this one didn’t seem to be quite as impressive or lavish as others we’ve seen.We took a stroll around the historic quarter and had a beer in the Plaza Mayor while doing a bit of people watching and taking in yet more of the wall-to-wall sunshine that we’ve enjoyed this holiday.
….holiday blogs, motoring obsessions and an occasional account of goings-on in the Ewbank household
