Adventures With Harvey

Farewell Spain… and hello Portugal!

Jerez de la Frontera is famous for two things – sherry and horses. It’s located not far from Cadiz on the Spanish coast and is in the middle of the ‘Sherry Triangle’ so no prizes for guessing what the main industry in the area is! Jerez has several large Bodega (wineries) offering tours of their facilities along with tastings so, for no particularly good reason, we chose Bodega Tio Pepe which is one of the oldest and largest in town. A beautiful and stately old property however the guide had a thick Spanish accent so you had to concentrate quite hard to understand him. At the end of the tour was a tasting along with matching tapas which was a perfect way to end the tour.

Next day it was time for yet another new experience, this time it was the Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art – yes, it’s a horsy town for sure. The show was called ‘How the Andalucian horses dance’ and the name of this show is most definitely accurate. The indoor arena has an immaculately-groomed sandy floor and the show is choreographed to music. First it was a single horse and rider, followed by 2 in a synchronised dance, then horses being led by 2 trainers, then one. The level of training and the various tricks these horses could perform was amazing although we did occasionally wonder how much fun it was for the horses! Next up were a couple of 19^th century horse-drawn carriages which neither of us had seen up close and personal before. The only time these beautiful carriages appear these days is for royal weddings and funerals, oh and maybe a coronation in the not to distant future! Just so clever how they can be manoeuvred, including riding in very tight circles and very close to the edges of the arena. The grand finale was 8 horses & their riders trotting around in beautiful harmony, it really was like they were actually dancing.

With Jerez done and dusted it was time to explore further, this time to a very small town by the name of El Rocío which had recommended to us. If you can imagine the Spanish version of a small American town from the wild west, that’s the closest simile I can come up with – we’re talking streets made of sand, many horses and almost no cars. The main differences being a beautiful old church in the middle of town, and no saloons, cowboys or Indians 😊. We had planned to stay the night there however this turned out not to be possible but we found something even better around 20km away, a clifftop overlooking the Atlantic ocean, a short walk from the little town of Matalascañas. Every so often we Travelling Woodies need an admin day, there always seems to be plenty on the to-do list so this most beautiful of outlooks seemed like the spot to park up and get some tasks crossed off the list. One night turned into two and we spent a lovely evening in our deckchairs watching the sun go down into the ocean.

This turned out to be out last night in Spain because the following day we were headed West again and very excited to be visiting another new country! However there was one stop on the way, the city of Huelva because we’d heard there was a very large curved wharf there that was well worth a stop. Huelva is at the mouth of the Rio Tinto which is a name that seemed familiar to us both – yes, the river also shares it’s name with a mining company, the very one which currently owns the aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point at the very southern end of New Zealand. As you drive into town, there are a huge number of tanks and silos, presumably for storing oil and perhaps the result of other mining and drilling operations. The wharf is a curved double-decker and was built by the Rio Tinto company in 1876 to enable the loading of vessels by gravity, thus the 2 story design meaning trains would arrive at the top level and the minerals simply released into the hold of the ship. Well worth the stop!

For no particularly good reason (& after putting our clocks back an hour as we crossed the border) we decided that Tavira would be our first stop in Portugal and we’ve fallen in love with the town so much that we’re still here. It was always part of the plan to park up somewhere on the south side of the Iberian Peninsula for at least a week to take a deep breath. As much as we’re loving our travelling and exploring, it’s nice to stop for a bit, get to know a town in a little more depth and take a short break from always being on the go. It certainly helps that your author has found a most excellent local watering hole, The Black Anchor, the Irish pub in town where a couple of new friends have been made already and a bottle of the local brew will set you back the princely sum of €1.80. We’ve also found an excellent free parking spot by a little tidal river which is only just over 1km from town so it’s easy to get around on foot. Around 5km down the road is the little fishing village of Santa Luzia which has a quaint little waterfront with a multitude of fishing dinghies and slightly larger trawlers tied to the wharf up or anchored in the estuary. Also nearby is Tavira Island which is an 8km wide nature reserve which you can reach on foot or by a little tourist train that takes you all the way to the beach on the far side. Up until the 1970’s the area used to be a hub for the tuna fishing industry however these days it's a popular tourist destination and contains a memorial to the industry in the form of an anchor graveyard.

Tavira, like most towns in Europe it seems, has ruins of a castle on the top of a hill and a couple of lovely churches. However one of the more interesting places to visit was a Camera Obscura. There are only a few of these left in the world, apparently one of which is in Napier, NZ. It was on top of the water tower and was basically a large dish on which you could see, through the use of mirrors and a giant lens, a 360 degree view of the town in real time. The enthusiast, (who built it in 2004 out of 120 year old components), gave us a guided tour of the town without having to move. Apparently a similar contraption was used by Napoleon to see where his cannon balls were falling and improve his aim.

Yesterday afternoon was a short drive down the road to Faro where we got all our big chores sorted for the next week or so; laundry, grocery shopping, filling LPG, filling water & emptying waste etc. Now we’re all set and can stay here another 5-6 days without problem, especially as there’s a decent amount of sun most days and it’s now high enough in the sky to hit our solar panels and recharge the batteries. The generator, which got quite a good workout there for month or 2, is largely redundant these days (a fact for which our fellow motorhomers are very grateful, no-one likes a noisy, smelly generator running in their camp site).

Although the first of last week’s matches crept up on him a little, your author has decided that this year he’ll take in as much of the Six Nations Rugby competition as possible. These games are on every week or two with 2 on a Saturday arvo and the other on Sunday – pretty much every town has an Irish pub and every Irish pub plays the rugby. It’s a good chance to scout the Northern Hemisphere teams in this, the year of the Rugby World Cup! Here in Tavira the first game tomorrow will be a cracker – the 2 top ranked teams (France & Ireland) playing a game that may well decide the winner of the overall competition and your author has already made friends with a local Frenchman and some visiting Irish. It’s going to be excellent craic!!!

A few people have chastised this correspondent for a lack of updates about Anita’s shoulder for which he is apologetic. The shoulder is healing well and she can now do most things, although the confidence on the bike is taking a little longer to come backm. She says she still can’t change the bed or make cups of tea so they are still my department. I may be being taken for a ride.

Perhaps there is more to report however this correspondent can’t remember anything else of significance so for today, this is Adventures With Harvey bidding you a cheery farewell!

greetings from Spain's Atlantic coast

Tio Pepe himself - founder of the winery (mainly producing sherry) that bears his name.

this company is huge, exporting their fine product to 115 countries around the world. each of which has their flag on a barrel... including New Zealand