The sun is shining over the Mediterranean, cooling breezes are whispering across the waves, and the Covid vaccines are here. Hurrah on all counts. Incidentally, the Pfizer vaccine was first administered in the very same Coventry hospital in which I was born.
I lived in Coventry only for the first 10 weeks of my life, after which the family home moved to Sunderland. I mention this autobiographical snippet because those 10 weeks were, until now, the longest period I'd ever gone in my life without seeing the sea. But that record has now been broken, me having just spent 12 consecutive weeks in the interior of Spain. I'm glad that it's now at an end. Standing by the ocean shore, savouring the aforementioned cooling breezes, staring into infinity...it's something we should all do, from time to time. It's good for the soul.
After Cáceres I spent a night in a one-horse town in southern Extremadura called Zafra. When you're out in the sticks, sadly, the quality control does sometimes drop a bit in the food department. In posh Madrid cafes, the croissants and tostadas contain real cheese, with an authentic whiff of sweaty feet; in the more modest establishments, you get cheese slices out of a packet, which is fair enough. But in Zafra I got served cheese that had been freshly squeezed out of a tube. Such things are not to be endured.
Worse still, the beer options are narrowed beyond the limits of tolerance. Even the meanest dive in England will be able to rustle up a mainstream beer of drinkable quality, eg a Stella or a Guinness. But quite a few bars in Zafra had only three options: Mahou (piss), Mahou Radler (watered-down piss) or Mahou 0.0% (pointless piss). Having said that, they offered wine at €1 a glass with a tapa thrown in. Maybe it's a fair trade-off overall.
After Zafra I spent one night in Seville. The borders of Andalusia are nominally sealed right now, but my train journey was 'essential travel' because I had an email from Ryanair to show that I was booked on a flight from Malaga to Newcastle. In fact I had no intention of getting on the plane, because I had no intention of going home to Tier 3, and Ryanair had cancelled the flight anyway. In the event, nobody asked me any questions. But as a precautionary measure in case of me being sent back to Zafra, I'd refrained from booking any accommodation. And so, getting off the train at Seville's gloriously spacious Santa Justa railway station, I found myself in that agreeably liberating state of having no commitments at all in my life. Not only having no home and no job, but not even having anywhere to spend the night. Just me and the backpack.
It's a liberating feeling for about forty-five seconds, and then you realise night is falling and it's a bit nippy and you need to get indoors. So I sat down on a wall and went online, and by a happy coincidence the best hotel option was literally right in front of me. Bish bosh boosh. I got a bus to Malaga the next day.
I've dwelt at length on the journey because many of you will have been to Malaga and you don't need me to tell you about it. But see the pictures if you're interested. In the meantime I need to book another flight home, but not until Sunderland comes out of Tier 3. Or until a no-deal Brexit compels me to flee Spain as a refugee. I'm living on the edge.
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| Panorama photo, looking west from the Gibralfaro castle |
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| South from below Gibralfaro. The circular building is the bullfighting ring. |
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| Jardines de Pedro Luis Alonso |
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| The cathedral |
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| Christmas lights on Calle Marqués de Larios |
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| Nearly as good as Seaburn |
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| Getting my vitamin D and avoiding the winter blues |
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| Malaga digs. Old building, high ceilings, pretty drafty. My kind of place. |
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| Edd vs Food #95 Tapas in the proper Spanish sense - ie you order a drink and it comes with a random bite. Always a lottery. Or, as in this case, a game of Russian roulette. Fish and olives. They really saw me coming. Bastards. |
