Storks nesting on top of powerlines in the Australian country side – true! … well nearly! – it certainly looks like southern Australian hill country side in spring – gently undulating hills and thousands of eucalypts. The need to substitute storks for kookaburras did stretch the imagination a little as did the infernal need to keep driving on the right hand side of the road. In the end we settled back to reality and accepted that we were on a gentle drive from Gibraltar to Seville through the mountain town of Ronda.
It is patently obvious that in order to enter the public underground car par in any town let alone Ronda it is necessary to drive down a street 3 inches wider than a Peugeot 207 and then to manoeuvre your way between crowded café tables peached precarious on the summit of the entry ramp so why did I baulk at threading the car past diners and in the process hold up the procession of cars behind me? I could have kissed the little old Spanish man who came up to my window and assured me … “is alright!”.
If you wish to provide for your great, great, great grandchildren then you should find some lovely mountain country with some rolling hills (it probably helps if they are a little on the steep side) and a least one gorge or cliff face that is virtually impossible to build on … leave the rolling hills un-occupied and build a small city on the uninhabitable cliff face. …make sure that everything you build is in the most difficult place to build that you could image … let it sit there for few hundred years and wait for the tourists to roll in …….
This is quite unfair to Ronda. It is a lovely town perched on the top of a very steep … certainly the surrounding country side is untouched while the buildings are all on the inhospitable cliff faces but clearly this was for defensive purposes in the days of the moors. This is still six weeks away from the start of high season yet the town is already swamped with tourist buses … poor little Ronda!
I suspect pole dancing originated in underground car parks of Spain. It is a fascinating if not slightly stressful activity but is one that we experienced many times in Spain. Pole dancing is the art manoeuvring your seemingly enormous motor vehicle through the pole lined twists of car park entries and egresses while spectators in their own vehicles display their admiration for your extraordinary driving skills by playing their stanzas from the car park symphony.
Of course pole dancing can have unforseen consequences one of which we experiences in Ronda. Normally getting out of any underground car park is a straight forward process – you pay your money … you get your ticket authorised … you get in the car …. You drive to the exit …. You insert your ticket … the barrier rises and you exit the car park. In Ronda this is true in theory only – in practice it works like this.. you pay your money, you get your ticket authorised …… you go to your car ….. you get to be a spectator at an extraordinarily long pole dancing exhibition by an attractive but hardly competent young lady in an slightly oversized car … the show eventually finishes … you finally arrive at the exit station with your nerves a little on edge….. you insert your ticket ….. the meter decides that it does not like its taste …spits it out and displays a sad face … your fellow travels behind you become frustrated and the automobile symphony again echoes through the parking chamber.. your passenger runs over to the attendant thereby holding up everyone else behind (they have also been pole dancing spectators) … the attendant abuses your passenger (more like "Fawlty" than "Manuel from Barcelona")…. Don’t you know you only have 10 minutes to get out of the car park after your ticket is authorised? .. Eventually the "Fawlty" retreats to his office, presses a button and we escape … there should end the story but of course almost everyone else behind us is now in the same predicament… We leave town immediately for fear that our fellow travellers recognise our “Open Europe” number plates and want to transfer their frustrations to us.
The drive towards Sevilla continues to exhibit glimpses of the Australian country side with grassed rolling hills covered with crops of wheat, barley and sun flowers and the less frequent but significant olive groves.
Sevilla greets us kindly enough as we enter its outskirts … she initially parades as a modern low rise city that is not unlike some of her Australian counterparts with nice open streets. … as we continue in towards its core the streets become more constrained and she becomes more inclined to send her Spanish drivers to educate us in the way of her driving traditions by pointing out the error of our ways using their car horns like cattle prods to guide you on your way.
She becomes quite a testy and feisty lady as you enter the centre of town during siesta time … she needs her mid-day nap and she is not inclined to smile upon antipodeans who are trying to negotiate one way streets to find central city hotels who have passed their finest days and who now survive by offering internet savvy travel accommodation bargain.
We arrive at poor old hotel Marian a little stressed and not at all in love with this Lady Sevilla.
We take our own version of the siesta and sleep off our tiredness until we emerge from Marian looking for a restaurant to cheer us up. Senorita Marian has proven to be a pretty little retreat and her environs were suddenly much more appealing when our siesta was over and the bustle had returned to the city. Suddenly the inner city streets (more like blind alley ways) that had seemed dirty, littered with dog residues, occupied by an excess of irritated people and unsavoury looking characters was transformed into a clean footways full of smiling people. Was it the Lady of Seville that had changed?
Without any shadow of any doubt what so ever – can I be any more definite than that! – we had the finest evening meal Bernadette and I have ever experienced. It was a Tapas selection supported with local wine. Plates of eggplant, Iberian pork and potatoes, lamb burgers and spicy sauce and Spanish omelette were all ordered, consumed and reordered.
A short wander through one of the endless inner city alley ways led to a flamingo bar were we had earlier consumed repeat tumblers of Spanish summer wine – Tinto verdo – it was delicious – just like the Kia Maison of Paris days. Bernadette and Merie were enthralled with the flamingo dancer, singer and guitarist.
Meandering a kilometre home through narrow but well lit alleyways at 12.00 o’clock at night feeling entirely safe made one feel that the Lady Sevilla was not entirely displeased with having us in her midst.
Another 30 kilometres see us arrive in the small town of Loule. Oh chaos perhaps you really have deserted me! This is a beautiful clean modern little town … the receptionist at the nice hotel speaks fluent English, the streets are wide and clean by the standards of Spanish cities and there is an air calmness and quietness that invades the town. This is a town that is clearly interested in acquiring some British and US money … the stand outside the local real estate office display property brochures in English.
