…the now insignificant village of Palos de la Frontera. It was form this port that Columbus sailed on Aug. 3rd, 1492, on his voyage of discovery with this three small vessels, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña. - Baedecker;s Spain and Portugal, 1901
Read moreThrough the Ham Towns...
It was a hot, cloudy sky that covered the world south of Badajoz as we peeled southwards. These were roads less travelled, far flung dusty stretches of tarmac than ran parallel to Portugal. Simple countryside that recalled the Serengeti and which produced manifold conquistadores. Did they simply want to get out?
Read moreSherry days in Jerez.
The word ‘sherry’ conjures up in the mind a menagerie of wrongs. It is usually thought of as a sickly sweet dessert wine that grandma drinks at Christmas; pouring a little dram out of the bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream that has been sitting there for years, the alcohol all evaporated off and with sugar crystals sticking the cap on. This is not the sherry that confronts the visitor in Spain.
Read moreSevilla: the Moorish picture book
The great Sevilla. Byron said it was ‘famous for oranges and women.’ V.S. Pritchett in his lovely book ‘The Spanish Temper’ claimed that ‘Seville is a city of shadows which tunnel under a dense foliage that is dead still, and pleasure seems to walk with one like a person’. That great travel poet Jan Morris spoke of the ‘dazzle of Seville’. It is not a city in need of writings. Less a hidden treasure like medieval Caceres or handsome and green Oviedo, and more a celebrated star of the south.
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