Homecoming...

This post is a little late, as wifi was variable during the final days of our trip - a week stolen on impulse, changing our booking and extending our travel eastwards: Vélez-Rubio, for an overnight Aire stop in this little riverside town between two sierras with a restaurant playing Wham, then on to Vilajoyosa where I'd stayed with Jill Miller, feminist writer and Frome's inspirational charity innovator, who made this lovely beach resort her home for several years before her death last October.

Time for more crags and castles then as we moved slowly westwards: Jalance, with a hermitage and superb historic mosaic fountains -Albarracin, where our cliff-top Aire gave stunning views across the double-walled hill, - Medinaceli with its massive Roman arch.

By now we're moving consciously towards Santander, via the Rioja region: a mellow Sunday night in Labastida and then Lierganes our final stop before Santander and the ferry home. 

And after two and a half thousand miles of driving, stopping in quiet places with amazing buildings & fascinating histories, what's really seared on my mind is the space: the vast vivid sky, endlessly blue on most days - the massive sierras, the near-endless forests and rocks of our driving landscape - their subtle colour shifts through every tonal range: coppery-gold to russet, lime-green to forest, pale sapphire to cerulean...  England still feels strange: grey, and crowded. I guess I'll get used to it. 

Even now we're back there won't be any Frome-related live reports till the requisite 14 days is up, but it's good to see 'the arts' are holding their own... Frome's talented visual animator Patrick Dunn has created a short video for Steve Pottinger's poem inspired by that crass advert urging creatives to de-skill from their years of training, inspiration & commitment, and sit over a keyboard instead. - you can see this animated version of Fatima here. Sadly, I missed Liv Torc's 'Rainbow Fish Speakeasy' zoom event with Elvis Mcgonagall, one of the excellent promotions from Wordplay, but it's good to know creatives are finding routes within the confines: live music & meetings, and online readings & workshops. Also lightening the final days of official summer for me: an enthusiastic review of The Price of Bread from the editor of Plays International which included the suggestion that this 'fast-moving story that has balanced narration and history, the private and the public, with sensitivity. Reading it non-stop I became convinced that it is a potential Booker Prize candidate.'  

So there's always something nice about coming home, even when your fridge has died and everything's now in a puddle of water.  

still half a world away

 A zigzag week, from Andalusian beach to a lake in the Sierra de Almijara to crags and castles, then back to the coast of Granada. Here's some images: lake Viñuela, en route to our three randomly chosen historlc towns in Cordoba province: Zuheros with its fantastic elevated castle,  Rute, which had surprisingly baroque street architecture and the region's Anis factory, and Priego de Cordoba, a busy town with a young population featuring not only an Islamic fortress and restored muslim nucleus of the town but also an elaborate 19th Century water feature which is also now a historic monument.

Southern Spain has a bloody history and our current campsite is in another brutally-conquered territory: poly-tunnel land, the shimmering plastic wastes that smother this coastal area. But it's a pleasant change to be on a site, after a week of  -massively enjoyable but isolated- Aires plus wild-camping on a car-park for trekkers on one of the Parques Natural. This is at Castillo de Banos, where we arrived today to find palm trees, sunshine, and a sea-line that apparently never recedes...

Wifi access has also given me the pleasure of listening to Eleanor Talbot's programme online on the theme of TRANSITIONS, which includes her interview with me about The Price of Bread at about 30 minutes in as well as Eleanor's thoughts and music choices. I read too that there has been much rain in Somerset. Here it's still sizzling hot with an unreal azure sky. For one more week ...

Week 2 of the Spanish adventure

Sunset Cafe on the beach at Sanlucar lured us for a few days more, with next stop the limestone peaks of Sierra Bermeja, in the gorgeous biosphere reserve & bird sanctuary Casares (confusing for the map-reader as nowhere near our earlier stop in Cáseres) - where we watched eagles and griffin vultures circling the amazing rock peaks. 

Then down the coast road to Torre del Mar, the ex-Moorish fishing village now a town with an extensive campsite where we stopped on our last visit. Parrots in palm trees, brilliant bougainvillea, paella in the beach bars... with our last week shuffling into view, we changed our tickets to extend our trip another week. Good luck with the rule/s of six, guys - here the sun shines & everyone wears masks - just bought a sequinned one, for evening...

The respite trip: week 1

Three weeks away from England, as a boost for the inevitable stress and coldness to come, that was the plan as we set sail last Sunday to Santander, in Steve's motorhome, next day heading southward to a campsite on the coast near Cadiz. For total respite, my chronicle of the days was limited to haiku form. Here's a smattering:

Monday:

Mountainous highways

Caravaggio landscapes

We're in Northern Spain.

Palencia now 

Quiet in evening sunshine

walking through the park

Windmill farm land here 

stick-legged beasts straddling 

this flat hill-top land 

Tuesday:

Ampudia stroll:

underground grain stores, 

revamped ancient town 

Look! big glinting wings

soar and swoop in the dense blue 

a golden eagle

Wednesday:

Flat pale cornfields

more than hours drive today 

down to Cáceres

Fast highway southwest:

Old town tour, wine and tapas

- sudden thunderstorm!

Thursday: 

Only a short drive:

 Zafra Aire, Dia close by -

pizza/movie night

Friday: 

Sanlúcar campsite 

as great as we remembered! 

 wander to the beach

Saturday:

Walking the long beach

seriously azure sky

champagne sand, and beer

Sunday:

Lazy day, hottest yet -

late in the day, long beach walk

back to town, to eat :-)

A short intermission.

Much has been happening in Frome as September ends. There's been a carnival, a climate strike in the streets, music sessions - including Pete Gage band at the Grain Bar Roots Session - and all kinds of other livelinesses but this bulletin will digress to a brief account of sunny Spain, as viewed from a motorhome travelling through landscapes ranging from beach to mountain, trees to towns, with long walks and lingering tapas meals... a holiday, in other words. 

Here's a whistle-stop tour of our fortnight:

From an excellent coastal start in Torre del Sol (where wild parrots outnumbered tourists, and a Stones cover-band played at the beach bar) we headed to the Sierra Nevada mountains and explored the 'whitewashed village' of Güéjar. The church here seemed to have been hijacked from moorish origin by the addition of a bell-tower, but the spirit of rebellion is still healthy - there's an avenue dedicated in 2015 to all victims and one of the street statues was sporting a flag in support of the November 25th International Day of Elimination of violence against women.

After driving to the Sierra Nevada summit to gaze at the awesome views, we turned back south and spent several days in Ronda walking the lanes that circle the town which give far more impressive views of the famous gorge than the over-popular bridge, and enjoying excellent 1€ cortado coffees at the Bodega San Francisco.

The next plan was to find a campsite near enough to Seville to take a bus into the city, but as the temperature was edging up to 30° that day, we opted instead to use the pool -

- and next day headed south-west to just north of Cadiz, past the parque natural, to a remote but lovely campsite by a long soft sandy beach that offered a 3-kilometre walk to Sanlúcar.  In the other direction a stroll brought us to a tiny clifftop bar perfect for watching the sunset as local children played on the beach.

An even shorter walk from our (exclusively Spanish) site took us to a tiny village where no-one spoke any English at all, so shopping and tapas meals were a combination of my pidgin Spanish, the odd bit of Googling, and a lot of smiles and nods.

Three fabulous days here left us just time for one more exploration: the Pueblos Blancos, 'white villages', developed from moorish settlements.

We found an Aire on the outskirts of Casares, now a lively town but still with its ancient castle and with views right across the hills to the rock of Gibraltar. Our camping area doubled as an ornithological centre and we could watch the Leonardo vultures slowly circling above.  Here also, at El Rincón de Zoya, we had a tapas so splendid I broke my no-pitctures-of-meals rule...

And then it was back home via Malaga airport for me, as the motorhome trundles on the rest of its holiday journey. Normal service will be resumed in the next blog. In the meantime feast your eyes on a few of my Spanish highlights...

A tale of two towers - then normal service resumes

Torre del Mar is a coastal resort in the Malaga province, which means the beach is basically a sandy strip between high-density resorts, but it was originally a Moorish fishing village and the town behind the long promenade is popular with the Spanish so although Brit is spoken, it doesn't predominate. The old castle was expanded and fortified in the 1730s as a direct response to the loss of Gibraltar: some of the old walls remain and although much has gone, there are definitely what the Bristol Old Vic team would call Ponderable Clues. Information at the site  is entirely in Spanish, and is compiled with plangent indignation, translating: In 1704,  Gibraltar was lost in an act of piracy by the English fleet while Spain was not at war with Great Britain, and became a base to continuously harass the coasts of Malaga... Everyone you'll meet nowadays of course is charming to the English - we're no longer the dominant nation who seized the rock, we have a more risible role on the political scene, and Nazi bombing less than 100 years ago seems even more outrageous - there's a mural of Picasso's famous protest painting on the sea front, in the silver-sandy tones of the strand. We were on the campsite, under plane trees and near the beach bars where you could watch the moonlight flickering on the sea as darkness spread and it was still warm...

Further down the coast in Gibraltar itself, there's another history: a tale of epic endeavour as years of conflict left the rock riddled with tunnels longer than the roads outside, and 14 sieges devastated the community - the final one, in 1740, lasting four years. This tale doesn't need translation- it's English, like the town streets and pubs named after our monarchs, admirals and politicians. The caves, however, were home for Neanderthal communities for 100,000 years - there's a great museum emphasising their important place in the history of the rock - and from 711 this was a key part of the Muslim empire here, named The Hill of Tariq after their leader. The old Moorish tower known as the Calahorra, half-way up the climbable part of the hill, was the largest in the area of Iberia controlled by Islam and for 800 years called Al-Andalus. This was a seige tower, a place of last resort in the many battles that followed - there's 'impact craters' on its sturdy walls that have been dated back to the Castilian attack of 1333. Life under siege for the British community during the 18th century would have supported Thomas Hobbes view of life as 'nasty, brutish, and short', in a camp where disease, starvation, and bad sanitation killed them off in hundreds every year. Military discipline was savage - the mother in the reconstruction may be upset not just by that cartload of grey corpses but because her husband is lashed to a frame awaiting flogging for missing a call of Who Goes There? as required every half minute by men on sentry duty.

Back home, Frome is doing a nice line in autumnal sunshine and Somerset Open Studios arts fortnight is nearly over - in fact the only studio I've visited is Clive Walley who is developing his impressive series of Birches in Mist... here's Clive with 109 and 110 as a  diptych. The turbulent, red-tinged, foreground to these ethereal trees adds a strange undefinable element that visitors have found powerful and disturbing.

Though I've missed much music, including marvellous Pete Gage at the Grain Bar, I did arrive home in time to hear the extraordinary voice of Lewis Clark at the Cornerhouse, not only sounding amazing on his own folk/blues but interpreting Amy Winehouse impressively too.
Saturday was also Bath Spa University MA Scriptwriting Showcase Festival, with an afternoon of 16 short scripts, showcased fully-produced for stage or screen. Rosie and I went along as all three young actors in our 2017 Nevertheless Pub Theatre festival drama - Time Slides -were involved in various productions. I usually prefer live drama, but the two films we saw impressed us more than the staged scripts: one was a clever & very funny parody of women's roles in the entertainment industry written & directed by Gabrielle Finnegan, the other the poignant & succinct story of a short-lived child-snatch by a feckless mother - look out for more from Isla Ure. Gabby, hope you don't mind I've nicked this picture of you filming from the Shorts and Tees website!

It's six years now since writer Kate McEwan had the unlikely-sounding idea of overcoming her procrastination by gathering a likeminded group around her to encourage each other to persevere.
'The Write Place' became their shared solution - a studio at The Black Swan where you reserve a desk space and then just get on with it, and the group has grown to around 200 members, all using the opportunity of a few hours away from home pressures or temptations plus the ethos of commitment to personal projects. And perhaps also unlikely, Sunday morning turned out to be a perfect time for a writer's party to celebrate with prosecco & cakes, and talk with writer friends familiar and new, and join Kate's toast to 'Procrastination, the tie that binds us.'

Flâneuring in Fuengirola

Spain in November was an impulse choice: a last burst of warmth before winter grips England, and a generously-offered apartment in this coastal town wedged between Malaga & Marbella. I expected the downside would be a touristic culture but we found Fuengirola totally delightful, and most people we met were locals who communicated exclusively in the language of their land.  And the weather obliged, always warm and mostly sumptuous blue-skies and dazzling sunshine.  Days began with cafe con leche, usually in the cafe by the children's park where green parrots squabble in the palms.

And then exploring, finding splendid squares with fountains and statues, ochre & golden buildings, tile-paved alleys lined with orange trees, or paddling sandy beaches beyond the long promenade... and fabulous drives up into the hills, destination almost irrelevant as every route revealed valleys rich in their moorish heritage of irrigated olive groves, and the amazing rocks of the 'natural parks' of the Montes de Malaga.

Ronda, renowned for its history and views, is intriguing but the most commercialised place I've ever visited with the possible exception of Californian gold-rush Truckee, but we loved the icing-white buildings and narrow streets of ancient Istan. Bohemian little Ojen was a great find too, and Caminito del Rey, walkway of the kings, across a narrow gorge high in the hills by El Chorro. We discovered some fascinating places by using an out-of-date SatNav as our map and navigating randomly, based loosely on the time-for-a-caña-and-tapas?-that-bar-looks-nice.... principle.

Another unexpected delight was Fuengirola BioPark, literally on our doorstep, which boasts so many species I scathingly anticipated plastic replicas or else uncomfortable confinement but actually all the (very real) animals seem content in their spacious authentic habitats: my favourites were the stunningly beautiful big cats, the exuberant chimps, the beautiful binturong (surprisingly lively for nocturnal creatures) and the antique-looking Nile crocs and Asian alligators... but every creature was worth lingering to observe as they flew, crawled, climbed, swam, rested or ~ like the baby talapoins ~ scrambled and swung around on an assault-course style playground.
I can't say much about the restaurants as neither David nor I are foodies so meals weren't a priority with so much to see & do, but we enjoyed the workers' lunch-time deal in El Ancla, a little bar near la Plaza de los Chinorros ~ a popular evening venue perfect for people-watching ~ and some sensational tapas at Bar la Placa called como me pica la chistorra which apparently translates as 'mince my sausage'...  Tapas usually arrived with the caña, which varied in size around roughly half-a-pint, and wine is poured unmeasured and with charming abandon. Best of all, you never need to eat indoors, with open-air cafes where you can get breakfast for 2.50€ and every bar has tables in the street.

Back home now, and it seems strange so short a journey divides grey England from this vibrant sunshine city with palm shadows patterning the pavements of  pedestrian-friendly, cleaned-daily, streets, public gardens and parks offering free exercise equipment and wifi, and every corner a photo opportunity... Frome is twinned with Eden of course, but right now I'm missing Fuengirola.