Granada to Puente Genils

Wednesday 25th November. Granada to Puente Genils. Frankly we didn’t really know what to do today. The pressing engagement is to return the car to Avis in Cadiz by Friday so what to do in the meantime. There is Cordoba to visit but we also want to call in on Country Cyclists in Alhama de Granada who have a good website and we hope they might be able to help us make some sense of how to ride our bikes in Spain. So we went to Alhama and actually found them and they were amazingly very kind, supportive and helpful and even sold us a £4.95 1:200k map for E12 which frankly was a bargain as that scale a) does not exist in Spain and b) anything above this only shows the motorways and dual carriageways. After them we had a bite of lunch in a really rural café in Iznazar which turned out to be owned by a lady from Shaftesbury, and we learned at last how they harvest olives – not in a week as we suspected but between now and next March and they don’t pick each olive one by one, they simply strip the whole branch off and process it through some huge chopping machine. From there we gave up on seeing Cordoba until later and settled for a room in a modern hotel in Puente Genil which had everything you need including a restaurant (definitely the sort of place you go to eat- not take your girlfriend) and a huge TV turned up very loud and showing football and tennis alternatively (not much of the latter). After traveling through France and eating in places with subdued lighting and silent couples concentrating on the food, it is extraordinary coming here. Full strip lights, TV blaring (football mostly) and music from speakers all at the same time. It is all hugely noisy, and the Spanish themselves are very talkative. At breakfast the little cafeteria was full of locals who must have come off their shift and were tucking into slabs of toast coated with olive oil and finely chopped tomatoes - or a rough looking fish paste (take your pick) yummy. All mixed with clouds of cigarette smoke as there is no ban here. Skin tight jeans or leather leggings, and high boots are much in fashion, topped with big cardigans or leather jackets. They are at least twice as big as the French. The other big difference is that whilst in France we mostly saw over-weight Labradors or poodles who were very well trained. Here the dogs have a perfectly horrid time, and I could have adopted at least 30 already. There are starving strays everywhere and lots of squashed dogs on the side of the road. They seem to know a soft touch and all head straight for me and I find it really distressing not being able to do much about it. At the other end of the scale the horses are stunning and look a picture of health, whereas in France they were mostly skin and bone and in terrible condition. And another thing about the difference between the two countries is that the French ladies are frankly ‘chic’ - office chic, casual chic etc wearing black, black and more black. On the other hand Spanish girls dress for the office as if they were going to a nightclub…. to go to church as if going to a nightclub, on a Saturday morning to do nothing – probably in the hope they’ll be going to a nightclub. And frankly they deserve to!!