4 November 2022 - Vejer de la Frontera
Miles driven today = 22
Total Miles to date = 2,930
Exactly one month from today we need to have got ourselves all the way back up to Calais for our train to Blighty. I'm no more inclined to be driving several hundreds of miles every day going home than I was heading South so we will probably give ourselves a full fortnight to make the journey, which gives us another 16 days to enjoy ourselves here in the South of Spain.
There are 3 more places I would like to see before we leave this part of the World. Gibraltar, Ronda and the Alhambra in Granada. Lisa doesn't like monkeys and has been to Granada before so her list is even shorter and so we're going to generally take things a lot easier and enjoy the sea, the sun and the sand while we can.
Having said all that, our morning was a lot less relaxing than I had imagined. We only planned to move a few miles further down the coast today but en-route we wanted to visit the hilltop town of Vejer de la Frontera. The Rough Guide recommends that even people driving cars should park well away from the town itself so we heeded their advice on the basis that trying to drive somewhere close to the centre in a large motorhome would almost certainly end in tears.
I found what looked like a suitable car park on Google Maps, with a footpath leading to the town. However, what I didn't think to check was how steep the path was. From the car park to the Castle in the town centre was a climb of 600 feet! Lisa is from the Pennines and has a house at the top of a steep hill so we are used to giving our legs a decent work out but this was something else. I was dripping with sweat by the time we reached the outskirts of the town and Lisa was just about ready to kill me. Especially as we could have easily got a taxi from the car park at the bottom of the hill.
We stopped at a mirador, as much to cool down as to take in the phenominal views.
Then we continued uphill through the twisting narrow streets.
Even with my unfeasibly short T Rex arms I could touch both sides of some of the passageways.
We stopped for a coffee at a cafe close to the Plaza de Espana.
The Ayuntamiento or Town Hall faces out across the Plaza.
Vejer has been fortified since the bronze age and large portions of the town's walls remain in place to this day. However, we weren't entirely sure why you would want to mount a cannon on the outside of your citadel pointing upwards like this.
The main church is the Iglesia Divino Salvador.
It was tardis-like, looking much bigger from the inside.
Another church has been converted into a small museum, largely dealing with the area's agricultural history.
We didn't go into the castle. It is open to the public for a few hours every day but it looked more like a private residence to us.
This gate is known as the "Closed Door". According to the info plaque it dates from the 10th to 12th centuries but was closed off for hundreds of years to protect the Jewish Quarter residents from marauding Barbary pirates.
So once we had walked all the way back down the hill to the van we were pretty much pooped. We drove the short distance back to the coast and checked ourselves in at a new motorhome facility at Los Canos de Meca. It's €12 a night now that we are in Low Season. Electric Hook Up would be another €4 and a further €1 if you want to use the showers. I have some very important business to attend to on Sunday morning. Glastonbury tickets go on sale. So I need a reliable data signal and ideally an electric supply for my laptop too. Both are available here so we will probably be staying for at least another night.
Across the road are a couple of boardwalks through to a fabulous beach.
It's not been wall to wall sunshine today. In fact we had a little bit of drizzle to contend with when we headed for the shower block for our ablutions this morning. But the light on the Ocean is just as wonderful.
According to Google Maps there are the remains of some Roman baths among the dunes but all we could find were these rather ordinary looking bits of an old wall. There are no info boards that we could find so we really don't know if these have been around for 2,000 years or just a fraction of that time.
What we can be absolutely certain of is that is the edifice on the other side of the bay is the famous Trafalgar lighthouse. A little way offshore from here is where Nelson's British fleet gave Napoleon's combined French and Spanish navys a bit of a slap and as a result his effigy is now stood on a big stick in London.
Another reason we think we might stay for another day or two is there is a very nice beach bar on the track to the lighthouse. In fact the whole place has a bit of a laid back hippy surfer feel to it which always ticks all the right boxes for me.
We kept last night's promise to ourselves and headed down to the beach a little before sunset and were perfectly positioned to see the sun go down behind the lighthouse.
Cheers everybody!
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