“I Thought We Could Go Tomorrow” (Part 1)

It doesn’t take long to get back into the normal flow of things, especially after adverse weather events, which I know that I said that I wouldn’t talk about in this ramble so I will keep it brief, but the weather was thankfully now back into its usual Winter routine, cooler mornings of between 16-18 degrees(c), and warm afternoons that reach between 21-23 degrees(C), although the daily temperatures are beginning to decrease gradually bit by bit and when the strong winds blow they bring a chill with them, not so bad when we are walking but we can certainly feel it if we remain stationary for too long. The nights too are getting darker much earlier now, with the sun setting at around 6pm and by 6:30pm it is black outside, apart from the glow of the street lamps and, although the only view out to sea, are the lights that shine from the various freighters as they pass to and fro on the horizon, even from my balcony vantage point with the French windows closed, more so when the wind is blowing from the East, I can quite clearly hear the waves as they break onto the seashore below, sometimes slow and quite rhythmically, other times they just crash violently, but whatever the mood of the sea, I always find that it provides a calm sort of tranquility, additionally, the noise from the heavy leaves on the palm trees that surround us, well they too just add to the nightly audible ambience. Fortunately, although it is rapidly approaching the end of November, we have not, as yet, had to turn on our small three bar electric halogen heater in the living room, we have been known, in some previous years, to have had to use it from as early as October, so not having to use it as yet should save us some money on our next electricity bill, a thought that, unsurprisingly, provided me with yet another happy thought, I enjoy ‘saving’ money almost, but not quite, as much as I like the word ‘Free’ 🤭

On the Monday, after the usual relaxed coffee morning routine, Shazza announced that she wanted to go and do a ‘big’ shop at the Estepona Mercadonna supermarket 😲 which is the one we have now started to use on a regular basis over the last few months, it isn’t that much further away from the one we used to use, but that one now has lots of new residential buildings being constructed around it, so the parking situation, due to shopper’s and convoys of construction vehicles, is getting much more difficult, anyway, the Estepona one is larger, the aisles are wider and the parking area is larger, so it is a slightly less stressful event. We used to do a regular weekly shop, but with Shazza now purchasing most fresh fruit and vegetables in our local town every two or three days, or as and when we need them, the actual need to do the supermarket trips, for the larger and heavier items, are now down to every 10-14 days and she also has started to buy extra’s to stock up, I think she is already preparing for when Russia attacks the West, which according to her, could be any day soon 😲 I have told her not to worry though, as I am too old to be conscripted, although, she could still be called upon to return to the UK to work in the munitions factories, or perhaps to become a ‘Land Girl’ working in the fields, which surely would be a dream come true for her, what with her dreams of a self sufficient lifestyle 🤭 No, she didn’t find me funny either 😂

With trailing around shopping aisles, then hauling five heavy shopping bags from our car park up to the apartment, we considered that activity to be sufficient exercise for the day, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the apartment, just pottering around passing the remainder of the day until it was time for Dinner, and then we sat and watched whatever there was on the TV, or Netflix, or You Tube, for the rest of the evening.

It was around 7:30pm on this particular Monday evening, and there I was, engrossed in a new, well new to me at least, ‘You Tube’ Video Vlog that I had just started to binge watch. I had discovered one about a London couple, who I was guessing were in their mid-thirties, who were starting a new full time Narrowboat Lifestyle cruising on the canals and rivers of the UK, giving up on their costly London rental property, whilst continuing to work in their professions as ‘Digital Nomads’. I always thought that such people earned this type of living whilst conducting a more nomadic lifestyle, e.g. in a Motorhome, Boat or even whilst Backpacking, generally people on the move 🤷‍♂️ the clue I thought was in the title ‘Digital Nomad’ but, apparently, this is no longer the case as anyone who works on a digital device, away from a traditional working environment, is classed as a Digital Nomad, but there you go, the world has moved on and is leaving my understanding of it further and further behind 🙄 Just digressing a little bit, regular readers of these rambles will know that once upon a time, in a land far far away, Shazza and I once had a yearning for living a full time life on a canal boat, but then we elected to choose the Motor homing lifestyle, primarily because we already owned a Motorhome and knew nothing about driving 50-60 foot long ‘Canal Boats’ or operating ‘Canal Locks’. In all reality, and with the rose tinted glasses well and truly off, that particular lifestyle has all but passed us by now, but we still enjoy watching other’s doing it.

Anyway, Shazza pipes up, right in the middle of one episode, “Should we get away for a couple of days ?”, I felt confident that she wasn’t going to suggest hiring a Narrowboat in Spain, simply because there aren’t any 🤭 “Sounds like a good idea” I muttered half heartedly, “Where are you thinking of going ?”, half expecting her to come up with several, possible maybe, sort of suggestions, that would require further and later discussion, but hopefully not until after I had finished watching my programme. ‘Carmona’ she says, “That sounds good, when do you want to go ?” I asked, with one ear still tuned in trying to listen and watch the video Vlog, “I thought we could go tomorrow” she says, as casually as you like, I immediately pressed ‘Pause’ on the TV Remote………………………😲

Now my regular readers will of course already know that Shazza never, and I mean, never, just comes up with her ‘Shazza Adventures’ spontaneously, she has usually mulled them over for a few days, if not weeks, beforehand, and has also been known, on occasions, to add in a bit of pre-planning and devious persuasion, in fact I would go as far to say that she has become somewhat of a master of her art, in both respects. So let me start first with why the ‘devious’ aspect of her plan……………….

Several months ago now, we had watched a series of documentary travel programmes by Michael Portillo, on his travels within Andalusia, which I have to say were quite Interesting. Now during these programmes we learned that in fact he, Michel Portillo, a former very prominent member of the UK Government and later a regular TV travel documentary presenter, who has lived the majority of his life within the UK, is actually of Spanish descendancy, and he still has Spanish family living in Andalusia, we also discovered that he in fact owned a property in ‘Carmona’, a large town just East of the city of Seville and, although we didn’t see much of the town in the programme itself, the little we did see made me interested in wanting to visit it at some point. I had in fact originally planned, unbeknown at the time to Shazza, to make it a two night stopover on our return from our recent road trip to Galicia, but that trip, as you may recall, was cut short rather abruptly by Shazza’s mysterious illness. So, Shazza was not selecting a place out of thin air just off the top off her head, she already knew that I would be more than up for a short road trip there, although me and my OCD buddy would normally have allocated a little more time at the planning and preparation stage, although Shazza obviously already had, she just hadn’t allocated too much time for either the discussion or agreement stage 🙄 Now you may also consider that I was doing the same to her on our Galicia trip, but, in my defence, Shazza had wanted ‘that trip’ to be done without any pre-planning, just ‘Going with the Flow’, so I had decided that on our homeward bound leg of that trip we would just have happened to have ‘Flowed’ into Carmona 😂

Now Carmona is in the Northern part of Andalusia, although just three hours or so North of us, does tend, with it being quite close to the ‘Sierra Nevada’ mountain ranges, to see a dramatic drop in temperatures over the winter months, certainly much more than down here in our part of the Costa del Sol, so she had informed me that having ‘pre-checked’ the advance weather forecast, the ‘Works of Fiction’ had indicated that the next couple of days would be the best of the weather and that thereafter, it would deteriorate quite rapidly 🤔 “Okay, let’s do it” I said, and faster than a robbers dog she pre-booked us two night’s accommodation in a hotel in the ‘Old Town’.

We had a choice of two routes, either a three hour journey up through a generally more scenic mountain route, or a faster, two and a half hour less scenic route, along the toll free motorways. Given the recent floods with damage to villages, towns, roads and bridges, I was reluctant to use the mountain route, a diversion up there could involve a lot longer travelling time, so we agreed that the safer more reliable option would be via the slightly faster toll free motorways.

Although the AEMET ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast (Spanish State Weather Forecasting Agency) had provided no pre-warning, we awoke to light rain, but little more than a heavy drizzle really, so we got up, packed our individual overnight bags with not much more than a change of clothing, toiletries and electronic gadgets and at 10:30am, we commenced our journey. Fortunately, the wet stuff stopped falling shortly after departing home and the sun came out, providing us with a rather pleasant drive. We stopped briefly to re-fuel, had I had known beforehand that we were going on a road trip I would have re-fuelled when we went shopping the previous day 🤷‍♂️ Shazza had already eaten breakfast before we departed home and I certainly was not ready to eat at that time of the morning, so, after an uneventful journey we arrived at the hotel at 1pm, an hour earlier than the official check-in time, fortunately our room was ready and so, after securing the car in the ‘underground car park’, and with fingers firmly crossed that there would be no more heavy rain, which would have involved us having to snorkel to it when we left 🤿 We got settled into what was a very spacious room, although somewhat disappointingly, it had no view from the window other than overlooking the internal courtyard and swimming pool, which was closed now until next year. Personally, I would have preferred to book a room at the rather luxurious ‘Parador’ hotel, which was located right next door to an old fortress which we could have visited for ‘Free’ if we were residents at that hotel, but, at over €200 per night (not including breakfast), Shazza had decided otherwise 😢

We were both ready for lunch, so after unpacking our bags we went on a familiarisation walk of the area and in the main square we found several bar/cafes, so we chose one and, in the lovely warmth of the afternoon sunshine, we enjoyed a very relaxed ‘Tapas’ lunch. We had not intended doing too much sightseeing, just really a walk to get our bearings, but being such a lovely warm afternoon we found ourselves walking through several areas of the old town and then part of the lower, more modern part, of the new town area.

Prior to this particular trip, and purely coincidentally, we had both watched a ‘Netflix’ documentary on a brief history of the ‘Moors’, as in the Islamic race of people who had occupied much of Southern Europe prior to being ousted by the ‘Christian’s’ during the crusades. We had only really gained an interest in this when we were researching more on the history of the ‘Knight’s Templar’, but it was to become a very useful bit of knowledge during this trip, more so with the Architectural styles of the buildings. For Shazza and I, as pretty much self-confessed ‘history heathens’, this was to become a revelation to us as we began to notice the ‘Moorish’ influence in many of the buildings, normally we would just have said, “They are nice buildings, what lovely arches and what pretty looking tiles” 😂

The ‘Works of Fiction’ had got it’s forecast spot on, it was a really hot sunny day, around 22 degrees(c), we had gone out in shorts and tee-shirts but had taken light hoodies just in case, and to be honest, in the shade, they were needed as we could feel the chill in the air.

After having implemented our recently acquired knowledge on Moorish Architecture, people watching and just having a general good nosey at everything going on around us, we took to wandering quite aimlessly through the narrow cobbled streets, there may have been ‘Ruta Turistica’ arrows to guide us, but we don’t follow organised routes, it is so much more fun just wandering at our leisure and getting lost 🤭

Although we had not planned on leaving the ‘Old Town’ area, wandering aimlessly along maze like narrow cobbled streets sometimes means you have no choice where you end up, yes of course we had a tourist map, but no, of course we didn’t refer to it, how much fun would that have been. This after all was a Shazza & Eric Adventure, not an official guided tour 🤷‍♂️

We had somehow found our way at the main gated entrance to the ‘Old Town’, the ‘Seville Gate’ as it is known, there are several smaller gated entrances located around the old town, who knows, we may just happen to stumble across them over the next couple of days 🤭 But we decided to leave the walls of the ‘old town’ and wandered across a road into the more modern part of town to see what it was like.

We continued to explore the main high street until we came to the end, of the shopping street that is, the road thereafter just went on up towards residential housing, so we turned around and explored down some side streets on the opposite side of the road, it is amazing what you sometimes find. We stumbled upon a road that had a fountain, decorated with six stone lions, which I have to say looked more impressive from a distance than when we actually got close up to them, not even worth a photo. On one corner of the street was a Cafe Bar, appropriately called ‘El Liones’ (The Lions), but it was closed, on the adjacent corner, another bar, and not to be outdone by its neighbouring competition, was called ‘Bar Leo’, but that too was closed. However, right opposite both, was a gated park, there were no flower beds, it wasn’t that kind of garden park, or perhaps the lack of any was more due to the time of year 🤔 but each side was lined with trees and between them some beautifully ornate bench seating. We later discovered, when I did finally decide to read some of the ‘Tourist Information’ brochure that was folded in the back pocket of my shorts, that this was the ‘Alameda de Alfonso XIII’, there was only the one entry/exit point so we walked it’s full length and then back again, as we had nothing better to do or any other place to be 🤷‍♂️

We wandered back towards the old town, on our way we came across the ‘Convent of La Concepcion’ with a statue of a monk outside with one of his hands gesturing downwards, “Go on Shazza, give us a pose, offer up your hand to him” I instructed her, somewhat reluctantly she agreed.

She was only gone for a couple of minutes, although it seemed longer, then she re-appeared again looking a bit shaken by her Saintly abduction. “Was it a heavenly experience ?” I asked her, “I don’t really know, I had no idea where I was, but it felt hellishly hot” she replied 😂 Okay, I made that bit up, as if you hadn’t already guessed that 🙄

Instead of walking through the gate, back into the old town, I wanted to see if we could get up onto the turreted walls so we followed the outer wall and came to a flight of steps that looked promising, however, it was not to be, it just led us up to a cobbled road with lots of stone houses and beyond that, a steep hill that we didn’t fancy exploring, we were getting a little leg weary by then.

As we walked through between the outer and the inner walls, we noticed a very modern glass fronted ‘Tourist Information’ Office, on the outside we saw a sign, with an arrow, that pointed to the access point to the upper walls, we decided to return the following day on Part Two of our voyage of discovery. We had entered the ‘Old Town’ via a different side so we were walking along an unfamiliar cobbled road, but it was fairly busy with people and vehicles so we gambled upon it leading us back to the central square, from there we would know our way back to the hotel. We decided to stop at a very convenient Tapas and Wine Bar where we both enjoyed a tall glass of ice cold, late afternoon, ‘Vermut’, well it would have been rude not to 😉

We had actually walked very much further than either of us had intended, but it had been enjoyable, we returned to the hotel and collapsed on the large double bed, I can neither confirm, or deny, whether we took a late afternoon siesta of our own, but when we next opened our eyes, it was dark outside 😂 We agreed that we did not fancy walking back into the old town to seek out somewhere to eat Dinner, so we just went to a Bar/Restaurant that, although a separate business from the hotel, was attached to it. We ate in the bar, rather than the restaurant, as did everybody else, where we consumed far too many ‘Vermut’s’, but it was good that neither of us had to worry about being the duty driver and that was the end of Day One of our two day trip.

To be continued………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena