Our Spanish Road Trip – Part 1

Day One – Home to Jerez de los Caballeros

We awoke on the Monday morning, our chosen day of departure, to an unexpected and somewhat cooler morning, a nice fresh breeze was blowing in through the open balcony doors, although we both knew that that wouldn’t last long as the day’s temperature was already forecast to climb to yet another sweltering 36+ degrees(c). We had packed our bags the night before so, after our usual morning coffee’s, we loaded the car boot and at 10:00am we drove away, I had elected to do the first stint behind the wheel, not knowing where we would stop for a late breakfast, or perhaps brunch and, to be perfectly honest, at this point in the proceedings, we had no idea of when we would actually be returning home again, it could be in a week, or even a month, so this really was going to be an adventure 🤗

I had elected to do the first stint at driving, but this was much to Shazza’s displeasure as these days she prefers to do the majority of the driving, although she assures me that it has nothing to do with a lack of confidence in my own driving ability 🤔 she just get’s bored with being a passenger and she certainly isn’t like me, as I enjoy being a passenger so that I can take lots of photo’s as you know, of anything and everything 🤭 However, as we had travelled the first part of this trip on numerous occasions, I wasn’t bothered with doing any clicking away on my camera, but I knew that she would still get her way at the first opportunity, probably our first stop and to be honest she would probably then elect to do the majority of the driving over the coming days, or weeks, but I wouldn’t mind as by then we would be in unfamiliar territory so my clicker finger would get plenty of exercise.

Now you may recall from my last ramble, I mentioned that we had made a loose plan for our first day’s travel and that I may have, unbeknown to Shazza at the time, made my own cunning plan based on the knowledge that my beloved did not want to be driving for more than 4-5 hours per day. Well, as I knew would happen, within a very short time of being on the road, Shazza asked me the question that I knew she would, “Have you got any ideas of where we should head for once we get clear of Seville ?”, I smiled inwardly to myself, “Well actually” I said, and then reeled off my surreptitious pre-conceived plan 🤭 Fortunately, once she had looked at the small town on ‘Google Maps’, and my suggested modest three star hotel, with breakfast included, use of their swimming pool and free parking all included in the price, she agreed with my suggestion and went on to her phone ‘App’ and made the necessary accommodation booking. But I knew that from here on in, each night in our selected accommodation before going out for dinner, we would both sit down together and look at the road map both on ‘Google maps’ and our road Atlas and agree on a general direction for the following day’s travel and for potential night-stops. We would wait to book accommodation as we didn’t know at that stage if, or where, we may choose to deviate from our tentative route, as it was quite possible that we may have seen a ‘Brown’ Tourist sign to somewhere, or something, that may have been worth a detour off our planned route 🤷‍♂️ This road trip could be quite interesting and exciting, although perhaps, for me, tinged with some slight anxiety, not just because we may not go straight from Point A to Point B, but maybe several different ‘Points’ in between or, actually never getting to the original planned ‘Point B’ 😲 Additionally, there were no guarantees that there would be any accommodation vacancies at places that we did eventually decide to overnight, after all it was still, until the end of September, the tourist period both here in Spain, and also in Portugal. I mentioned this to Shazza, her response took me back to our full-timing Motorhome days when, in our early novice days, when Wildcamping seemed a dangerous option to me, I had similar concerns, she would always say, ‘Don’t worry, we will be alright, we will find somewhere”, and we always did.

I have to say that, for me, the first part of the journey was pretty boring really, which is a bit unfair as the scenery is absolutely amazing, but now that we have travelled this same route ‘numerous’ times, and are more than very familiar with the scenery, and all the landmarks, which now only serve to remind us of how far we have driven and ultimately how far we still have to go. After only an hour into our journey we made a stop at a small Cafe, one that unsurprisingly, Shazza had found on her route map and which was just off the main motorway but not a service station establishment. I am not the only one in this relationship that makes surreptitious plans. Yes she may have been hungry for, as unlike me who does not usually eat before lunch, Shazza needs feeding ‘at least’ three times a day 🤭 However she also had another purpose for stopping sooner rather than later. Although we had been travelling in the cool comfort of our very efficient Air-con, as soon as we stopped and opened the car doors the heat hit us, it was still relatively early, but the external temperature was already reading an opressive 30 degrees(c) 🥵 We ordered our usual coffee and tostado’s, but the toasted slices of bread that we each received were the size and thickness of a house brick, needless to say, we would not need to stop anywhere else for lunch, not even Shazza on this occasion. After devouring our late breakfast’s, it was then that Shazza implemented her own cunning plan and took the opportunity, whilst I was using the bathroom facilities, to jump into the driving seat 😲

Now just because she had evicted me from my driving position, I am not saying that it was she that was solely to blame for sailing right past our exit junction, part of my passenger duties, other than taking photo’s of anything and everything, was to be back-up navigation assistant to our Sat Nav 🤔 Let’s just say that perhaps we may both have been a little pre-occupied, either at concentrating on the scenery around us, or to be honest, due to the fact that we had been acting like a pair of irresponsible teenager’s by singing along, very very loudly, to some of our favourite 60’s, 70’s and 80’s pop tunes that were blasting out on Apple Car Play from the playlist selection on my iPhone, we did get some strange looks from the occupants of vehicles that overtook us 😂 Anyway, as a consequence, we missed our proposed turn-off into what would have been an even more scenic ‘Sierra de Aracena National Park’. It really didn’t matter though, we just drove for a few more miles then took the next available turn off the motorway and headed West, towards our destination, which was not far from the Portuguese border and now our new route would take us along some narrower country roads through a more central area of the National Park. But come on, alternative routes, pre-planned or otherwise, isn’t that what part of this road trip is all about, at the end of the day we didn’t actually need to be anywhere in particular 🤷‍♂️ Well, except that on this our first day we actually did, as Shazza had pre-booked and pre-paid for the accommodation, and at such short notice their was no refund if we cancelled, so no matter how many deviations we may take, we did have to end our first day of travelling at the hillside town of ‘Jerez de los Caballeros’.

Once we were on the roads within the National Park we noticed the change in the surrounding scenery, from long views of miles upon miles of Olive groves to now some many different types of trees, including a lot of Pines, and there were a lot more undulating hills, but the neatly aligned rows of Olive groves had now too become less regimented just acres upon acres of Olive trees. We still hadn’t, as yet, escaped the searingly hot Southern temperatures, it was now registering 34 degrees(c) 🥵 so, even though we had the Air-Con on full, our bottles of water were getting a little tepid, so we decided to stop at the side of the road, in a small village, for a very nice ice-cold cervesa (beer), although the bar initially looked closed, but as we passed by we saw the the front doors were open and their were lights on inside, I don’t know who was more surprised, us or the man sat at a table inside, but he stood up with quite a start as we entered, we passed the usual pleasantries and then ordered our two small beers. We took our beers outside and sat under the shade of a large sun canopy, it certainly did the trick for him, as shortly afterwards two small Spanish registered camper vans passed by, looked at us, gave a smile and then parked further up the road. Six adults alighted from the two vehicles, they were obviously travelling together in convoy, they said ‘Buenas Tardes’ as they passed our table, for it was now after 2pm, so the greeting changes from ‘Dias’ (Day) to ‘Tardes’ (Afternoon), much later it would change again to ‘Noches’ (Night), we responded appropriately, as you do. They sat on a large table adjacent to us and engaged in their own conversation. Suitably refreshed, and availed of the establishments other ‘conveniences’, after saying the usual ‘Adios’ (Goodbye) as we departed, in a general way to everyone, to the response of ‘Luego’ (Later), which always seems odd to me, unless they knew something that we didn’t, but it was very unlikely that we would ever see any of them ever again 🤷‍♂️ Although we were still heading towards the Portuguese border, we would not, on this occasion at least, cross into Portugal itself, although we hadn’t ruled out perhaps doing so at some point, dependent on our selected route up to Galicia, or perhaps even on our return trip 🤷‍♂️

Not needing to now stop for lunch actually turned out to be very advantageous, as we got to our hotel, ‘Los Templarios’ (The Templars) which was a quite basic but comfortable 3* hotel in the small town of Jerez de los Caballeros, a little earlier than we had anticipated. In the main reception area their was a suit of armour standing guard near the entrance, the cogs in my brain started to turn and my association with the name started to resonate with the ‘Medieval Knight’s Templar’, as you know by now, we are both self-confessed history heathens, but you may also know that I, much more than Shazza, have an interest in Castles and their inhabitants over that period of history, so this had intrigued me and I needed to find out if there was actually any connection, but more about that a little later.

Once we had got booked in and settled in our room we got changed into our swimwear and enjoyed a couple of leisurely hours in the hotel’s relatively large open air pool, it was a little after 4:30pm, six and a half hours after leaving home, a little longer travelling than we had planned but we did have two stops en-route, the temperatures were still in the very high 20’s and so it was refreshing to spend time in the cool water, we had to share the pool though, with a small family of four, but there was more than enough room for the six of us 🤭 so after our long hot drive we enjoyed swimming lots of lengths and getting some exercise, however, had we have known the physical effort we were to need, to explore the town later that evening, and also where we would get some dinner, we may have just decided to have had a late afternoon siesta instead 😲

After our refreshing swim we returned to our room, it was still far to hot to venture out to explore the town and the reception staff told us that the Restaraunts in the town did not generally open until after 8pm. We made ourselves a coffee, we had brought our own travel kettle and supplies as hotels here in Spain do not always provide such facilities, unless you want to pay for the more luxurious type of establishments. Shazza lay on the bed and read a book on her Kindle device, for me it was an opportunity to research a bit of history around these ‘Knights Templar’. Now to be honest, their is lots of stuff on the Internet, so I am not going to write a ‘War and Peace’ type novel in this ramble, my interest was purely on who these Templar Knights were and, what connection did they have to this particular part of Spain.

The ‘Order of Santiago’ were a Christian Military-Religious Order of Knights founded around the year 1160 in Spain. Their purpose was fighting Spanish Muslims, and the protection of ‘Pilgrims’ on a series of routes on their way to the shrine of St. James in ‘Santiago de Compostela’, these routes later became known as the ‘Camino de Santiago’ or ‘The Way Of The Saint’. The Order of the ‘Knights Templar’ got established in Andalusia between 1253-1258, when Islamic power began to dwindle and the Knights Templar made ‘Aracena’ one of their strongholds. symbols and signs of this mysterious order of Christian Knights can be found just about everywhere in these parts, even the town’s ‘Coat of Arms’ includes many of them. It was here that the Templar’s rebuilt the fortress they found upon their arrival and some of the rooms can still be observed, as well as part of the Towers and some of the Wells.

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The Christian rulers in Northern Spain and the Muslims ‘tolerated’ each other in a ‘Political-Financial Arrangement’’ in a form of ‘co-existence’ after the Northern Kingdoms took advantage of Muslim Principalities (Taifas), that had become fragmented and weakened. After having fostered the ‘threat of Civil War’ the Christians intimidated Muslim Ruler’s, charging them a form of ‘protection money’ called ‘Parias’, in the exchange for their ‘Alliance’ and ‘Loyalty’ and in return for NOT attacking them. The situation was similar to that in the ‘Holy Land’ in the 12th and 13th Centuries, where the Latin Christian Lords allied with Muslim Lords for ‘Mutual Advantage’. As in the holy land, Christian Ruler’s in Spain, would also ally with Muslim Rulers ‘against other Christian’s’. Far from being straightforward, the bloody history of Spain and its early presence of Muslim Kingdoms demonstrates a turbulent power game between Christian Rulers and Muslims, where a level of tolerance existed usually because of the exchange of money maintaining the status quo.

Jerez de Los Caballeros’ is a town located in South Western Spain, in the Province of Badajoz. It is located on two hills overlooking the River ‘Adrila’ and is situated 18Km (a little under 9 miles) from the Portuguese border. The old town is surrounded by a Moorish wall with six gates. The town is said to have been founded by ‘Alfonso IX of Leon in 1229. In 1232 the town was extended by his son, ‘Ferdinand III the Saint, who gave it to the Knights Templar, hence the name ‘Jerez de Los Caballeros (Jerez of the Knight’s).

Now I found this information, and believe me, a heck of a lot more, a very interesting read and in my opinion it would be very easy to ‘interpret’, or conversely to ‘mis-interpret’, some of these past historical events, and arrangements, to what is going on in today’s world between Christian Rulers and Muslim Rulers, but food for thought eh 🤔 What also intrigued me was to discover that the ‘Knights Templar’ may have been founded in the Middle Ages, but were then accused, some say falsely, for heretic and other crimes and all members were hunted down and sentenced to death. But keep researching and you find that the Knights Templar’ continue to exist ‘globally’ today, in a more modern form and are a quite separate, but not totally un-associated organisation, to the ‘Masons’ and other similar organisations. But, as they used to say at the end of the weekly televised ‘Crime Watch’ programme, please don’t have nightmares and in todays technological world where Social Media channels are rife, mis-information can often be very difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction 😳

Having read all of this history, I was sorry that I hadn’t known about ‘Aracena’ beforehand, the castle looked magnificent and it would have made a very interesting stop, without actually deviating off our route as we were only 2Km from it 🥺 Perhaps worth a weekend visit at some point in the future 🤔

So back to the script…………………….

The evening was still warm, but much cooler than it had been, so we showered and changed into, cleaner and smarter, shorts and tee-shirts. We headed towards the town but could not find the actual ‘Old Town’ area or where the shops and eateries were located, we just got ourselves lost in narrow streets with lots of residential dwellings and more modern type small supermarket style retailers. So I stopped a woman who I made the assumption of being a local and asked, in my bestest Spanglish, for directions, she smiled knowingly and gestured with her hand that we needed to walk in a ‘downward’ direction, the way she stabbed her finger in the downward direction got me a little concerned. We should have known, we had had to drive ‘up’ to our hotel accommodation and as I looked from the poolside balcony, all I could see were the roofs of the houses 😲 Of course, going down would not be the issue, but walking back up may very well be another matter !! The ‘old town’ itself was typical, quite pretty in a narrow cobbled street sort of way, all of which eventually seemed to meet up around a central Plaza, which are generally either overlooked by a large church or a town hall, this one was in the shadow of a church. However we were to discover that Monday was actually ‘closing’ day, although obviously nobody had informed ‘Mr Google’ 😡 So many of the shops and formal type restaurants were not open, but we always find that their are always a couple of Cafe/Bars available to quench the thirsts of both the locals and visitor’s alike and they all generally serve some sort of food, as long as you didn’t want A’La Carte, right now we could have eaten a scabby donkey, one each 😂 Their were two Cafe/Bars located directly next to each other, we chose to sit at the one that looked the busiest, but we soon came to rue that decision 😳

We know that we will never be considered as Spanish, nor do we actually want to, to be honest, no matter how good our Spanish becomes, we do not speak with the right sort of dialect, a bit like a foreigner who speaks very good English but goes to places in the UK, like Merseyside, Tyneside, the Midlands etc. well the same applies here. However, we do always try to speak in Spanish and we are always polite, saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ where and when appropriate and we know sufficient to make other conversations now and especially ordering food and drinks. So we sat down and waited for the waitress to come and take our order, she was young, probably mid-twenties, but her whole demeanour was one that said, “I don’t really want to be here”, she was dower and even though I said, in Spanish, “Good evening and how are you ?”, which generally promotes some sort of response, she remained aloof and expressionless, so I ordered our two drinks. It was quite evident that this was nothing personal as we observed that she was exactly the same with all the customer’s, the majority of whom were actually Spanish. When she eventually delivered our drinks, and with no exaggeration, she slammed them down on the table with such force that other customers looked around, she then just turned around and walked away, she was obviously having some sort of personal crisis 🤷‍♂️ The actual ambience, the warm evening air, the tables with the sounds of the other customer’s chitter chatter had, initially at least, made us feel quite relaxed and so we planned on staying where we were, ordering some more drinks and some food, then afterwards we would have a wander around the narrow streets before we made our ascent of Everest. However, we promptly changed our mind and after consuming our drinks we paid the bill, leaving no tip, as we normally would have done, which I am sure would have done nothing to cheer her up, but we hoped she got the message although we doubted it. We spent some time wandering the small alleyways and were quite surprised to discover a medieval style archway entrance that led into an inner courtyard and a rather nice well maintained park. It became evident that we were inside the walls of what was once a Castle and the views out over the surrounding countryside stretched for miles into the distance. It seemed a bit odd because Castles are usually at the top of a hill, with the newer more modern residences built around and below it, but here, the new more modern township had been built above it 🤔

We were all walked out, and as the evening turned to night we were now pretty ravenous, we realised that we hadn’t actually eaten anything since our brick sized tostadas earlier that morning 😲 The lights in the narrow streets and around the small central Plaza streets, took on quite a different but still pleasant ambience. We would rather have gone hungry than have returned to that same Cafe/Bar, so we decided to try the one right next to it, and what a difference, the waiter, perhaps even the owner, greeted us with a warm and friendly smile, showed us to one of the tables in the cordoned off traffic free street and asked us what we would like to drink and wether we wanted to eat something. As usual we spoke to him in our bestest Spanglish and he asked us where we were from, we engaged briefly in the usual pleasantries and then he brought us two menu’s, in Spanish, although he asked if we would like the ‘English’ versions, we declined and stated that we understood enough Spanish. Now I will not go into all the intricate details, suffice to say that the service we received was first class, friendly and attentive, the food was served hot and tasted delicious and when we came to pay the bill, which was amazingly good value, we were offered ‘shots’, gratis of course, one of us refusing, the other accepting, well it would have been rude not to, although I may have suggested that he used Shazza’s shot on the waitress in the establishment next door 😂 The walk uphill back to the hotel was not actually that bad, although that may have had something to do with the very nice large glasses of Anti-Covid Vaccines the waiter kept plying me with, I did protest but perhaps something got lost in translation, our Spanish isn’t as perfect as it could be maybe 🤭 Anyway, I did manage to submit two establishment reviews on Google, you can I am sure imagine for yourselves just how different they were.

just as a conclusion to the end of our first day on the road, I have to say that the hotel was very large, with several floors, but it was virtually empty of guests, it appeared to be more one of those accommodations that served larger coach trip type customer’s, but it was now nearing the end of the season. However, on saying that, the staff were all exceptionally friendly and we both enjoyed a comfortable nights sleep, and although the facilities were pretty basic everything was meticulously clean, although the rooms did look a bit dated. Breakfast had been included in the cost of our accommodation, however, when we went into the large, but virtually empty, dining room the next morning, their was very little to select from on the buffet style offerings and the coffee machine was not working 🤷‍♂️ We decided to leave and get on the road to commence Day two of our road trip with a stop, for our usual breakfast, somewhere along our route.

To be continued………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Footnote:

I have to offer an apology to you, to you the readers who have read this before I added the below amendment. As I don’t make any notes, I often get quite carried away with what I am writing and only after publishing it do I remember something that I had wanted to mention, usually it isn’t of any major importance so I don’t re-publish. however on this occasion I discovered that I had missed something of relevance in respect of the association of Jerez de Los Caballeros, the town where we had our night stop, and the Knights Templar.

”The last of the Knights Templar were actually killed here in the town of Jerez de los Caballeros, they were besieged in what is now known as the Bloody Tower”