It had been a while since I had last slipped off those sensual shackles of Madrid and got out into my beloved Spain and dipped my toes into some new waters; in this new case, quite literally. The autumn had been long and busy. Equal parts off-duty tour guide as visitors waded into my personal paradise and equal parts on-duty tour guide and translator. Every waking hour was filled with working, writing, word-searching, light alcoholism and a certain gleeful and definitive gluttony.
Read more‘I’m not scared of the vultures myself. I’m scared they might take one of the dogs.’
Elliot, an ageing Belgian Griffon, stopped in the sun and panted dramatically.
‘How you love the theatre,’ sighed Roque as he scooped up the little canine. Elliot’s concubine, Fanny, ran around as happy and dumb as the day she was born. We were walking off our lunch at the Hoces del Río Duratón natural park. Out 65km north from Segovia - one of Spain’s most romantic towns - a great snaking gorge had been carved out of the earth by the same forces that would, for America, scrape out the Grand Canyon. An emerald green river looped around a scrubby canyon where huge vultures wheeled around thermals above little chapels.
Read moreTo return to a place is something that I do not normally do. It’s like when people say ‘Oh, I’ve read that book like five times.’ No, I never, well, almost never, re-read a book. There are too many great tomes in the world to gobble up and too many sparkling places in the world that I need to go to before I die to afford doubling up.
Read moreBarcelona is one of those odd cities. There’s so much to do, but I don’t know if I like it. It is Spain’s second city and is arguably far more varied than the capital, yet I never feel comfortable there.
Read moreTo watch someone else doing your job is an interesting experience. Equal parts intrigue, jealousy, malice and learning. As a stand up comic at a comedy night, tour guides have their own style and will inevitably analyse, learn from, or rip apart others in the same field on observing them. Fortunately however, I work in the food tour industry; more of a club of like-minded food-obsessed gluttons than a one-upmanship parade.
Read moreRonda sat 420km from Madrid yet the days were long in the south so it was decided to return north by first going south. Leaving Ronda the road first took to the heights and skirted the Sierra de las Nieves park; at turns Scottish and at other turns Afghan. No towns, just peaks and scrub and goats with mournful bells.
Read moreThe slow road to Ronda takes one through some of the finest landscapes at Spain’s disposal. Following the breezy coast road for a while the route shots up north, first taking the preliminary white walls of Manilva; a pleasant place full of old people that commanded both views to the impending peaks and south to the sea.
Read moreMy second visit to Gibraltar. My second visit to this once Moorish, once Spanish, now British little stony finger of Union Jacks and pubs. A town wrapped around the warm flanks of a limestone hulk. A subtropical theme park where the genre is Britain.
Read moreTime to head east. Time to strike the Coast of Light; the finest of the great costas. It lacked many things both good and bad: the overbuilt tourism of Blanca and Sol, the geographic exuberance of the Bay of Biscay or the Scandinavian affectations of Galicia’s Rías, and it lacked the absurd pristine isolation of Huelva. Instead, it blended enough of all to be quite the finest stretch of sands and settlements.
Read moreThe land of the sherry wines is a fuzzy patchwork of dreamy fields that sit under that milky blue sky. Barley fields, vineyards and chalky ground formed a flag of white, green and yellow. Here and there a wine estate added a point of scale and reference to this undulating and dry place. It was a landscape dedicated to one product and the air hung heavy with flirtations of salt and fermented palomino grapes.
Read moreThe south of Extremadura was African in nature. A dreamlike Serengeti of yellow plains dotted with the occasional pearly white finca or sapphire blue reservoir. Sometimes a hill or ancient-looking ridge, dry and bullet-pointed with olives trees, sailed past along roads alive with oleander and broom. Seville went by in a soft-blur of spires and dockyards and then the world flattened out into a land of crops, sunflowers, humid salt marshes and ethereal cattle walking the marisma.
Read moreTime to leave the city. Time to breathe in deeply and inhale cleaner airs and take in new scenery. Or old tracks revisited.
Read moreThe need to escape a place and be alone is often tempered and countered by the desire to get away with friends and surround oneself with jokes and banter. The luck of life in Madrid is that both addictions are easy to fix.
Read moreApril is when that great southern city Sevilla is in full swing party mode. The wailing processions of Semana Santa over, the capital of Andalusia lets loose in a binge of tapas, sherry wine, bulls and flamenco dresses during the famed Feria de Abril. The sun, almost without fail, takes its tentative first steps at scorching the world and everything glows in a light that bounces off the old town’s colourful walls. In April Madrid is beginning its odd journey towards the heat of summer but often falters and throws down tropical thunderstorms and rain showers that garner energy in the northern mountains and spill over onto the meseta.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreHow long does one need to visit a city? Two days? Four days? A week? Can you ever truly know a city? ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.’ The immortal words of Samuel Johnson were full of the promise of endless interest in the city. And perhaps it is true. Though most visitors arrive, spend a few days, and then claim to have ‘done’ or ‘seen’ London. But perhaps they are right. To fully know an important city is nigh on impossible.
Read moreA month and a week filming in Italy is a month and week of discovery and journeying accompanied with various bouts of restrained gluttony. Every day a new place was visited, were it a hilltop village surrounded by mountains, a family-fun producer of balsamic vinegar, or a charming town home to Ferraris and opera singers. Much like Spain, Italy is big on food, big on tradition and big on regionality. I was impressed with Italy’s food, though admittedly rarely blown away. The over-reliance on pasta took its toll and I soon started to miss the food back home. By home I mean Madrid. I started to muse on the dishes and bars that crept into my thoughts and my stomach in the moments when nostalgia hit.
Read moreTwo things I really enjoy in life are parks and technology. I have an iPhone, a Macbook, an iPod, an iPad - a bit too much iStuff really - a kindle and a camera. And I use them all fully. Nothing was bought flippantly or capriciously. I also really love getting out of my house and strolling and pacing through any greenery at hand. Madrid, despite being a geographically very dry place, is blessed with a selection of wonderful parks and boasts more trees and green surfaces per person than any other European city.
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