Huelva to Sanlucar de Barrameda

Friday 27th November – Monday 30th November.
Huelva to Sanlucar de Barrameda (from where Christopher Columbus set sail for America)
We’ve just had the best ever 4 days in Sanlucar de Barrameda which began with having to get the car back to Cadiz. We achieved this even managing to drop the bikes off in Sanlucar on the way. We had selected Sanlucar having done a bit of research and it is where Hidalgo sherry comes from, and that is a particular favorite weekend tipple of mine! It was beautiful weather and we were steered firmly towards a little hotel in the centre of town by the very efficient lady in the tourist office. It is a lovely seaside town at the mouth of the river Gaudilquivir with a great atmosphere. Our plan having dropped the car off in Cadiz was to then take a bus home, which worked fine until we tried to find the right bus. Cadiz is rather large and no one knew which bus stop we should be at so we crossed the main avenue several times. Everyone was amazingly eager to help but no one really knew the answer until we luckily got on the same bus as the inspector who put us right. So the 1 hour journey actually got us back to Sanlucar 3 hours later – but it’s all good fun!
On Saturday we took the cruise up the river to look at the Donana National Park, (pronounced don yar naah) since we are not allowed there on bikes. It was cloudy and freezing but Alec was sure it would clear later so he wore shorts and a short sleeved shirt. 3 hours later he was bluer than his shorts! There were about 90 of us on board, all nationalities and some of them cannot have known what they had booked in for. Stiletto heels, miniskirts and lots of glamour amongst the locals,whilst the Northern Europeans amongst us were in boring old fleeces and walking boots (except Alec and one other birder with beard and large camera). We disembarked a couple of times and were taken into the park. Luckily the passengers were split into 2 groups, ours was the English speaking party consisting of Danes, Dutchmen, Swedes, Norwegians and us and we were all most attentive and asked extremely intelligent questions. The Spanish party on the other hand chattered like starlings all the time so there was no chance of any wild animal being within 5 miles and the guide must have been extremely frustrated. We saw ‘hundreds’ of Flamingoes and waders and 1 fallow deer. He was sitting behind a hedge and didn’t move for about 10 minutes so everyone thought it was stuffed and only put there for the tourists!
On our return from the boat trip we dared to venture into a rough looking tapas bar in the main square which turned out not to be hostile at all and ate an assortment of fishy things drenched in oil and washed them all down with Manzanilla fino by the bucket full. Sherry here only comes in buckets and is taken at all hours of the day. Next door was Senor Hidalgo’s sherry house so we booked ourselves in for a tour on Monday morning on the strict understanding that we would only get it if there were six in the party – undaunted as surely six people would want a guided tour, we left as it was time to get back on our bikes.
Sanlucar is a relatively flat town so we decided it would be fun to ride along the sea front and then inland and make a bit of a circuit. After 2 weeks of not being ridden things were a bit tight, stretchy, creaky and lacking oil but once everything had warmed up we bowled along just fine and the bikes were as good as the day we bought them.
The main town square is full of bars and restaurants so we tried them all and every type of tapas including some we still don’t know what was in them. They are mostly fish based this being a seaside town and it is a minefield of guesswork ordering. We now know that Choco is not what you would expect but is cuttlefish and features a lot on the menus here, in all shapes and forms. We are a great deal older than most out at night (and the only non smokers) which is great for viewing purposes but the tapas bars tend not to have tables and chairs and we quite like to sit down while eating!
In our hotel there is a charming girl who speaks excellent English and tells us she lived in London for two years working for Lord Dartmouth. She was an amazing fount of knowledge and made numerous telephone calls on our behalf to find out the times of things, what was open and so on and told us where to go after supper on Saturday night to listen to flamenco music. We found the place, it was a town hall with a small bar crammed to the rafters with people and a man and his guitar and a feisty lady who sang beautifully to much applause. We think the songs were on the whole about unrequited love and broken hearts because they seemed a little somber but the crowd loved it. Sadly the flamenco dancers (two girls who we found outside having a ciggy) had either just been on or weren’t coming on until after midnight so we never got to see them.
Sunday it was raining but we’d promised ourselves we’d go back to where the flamingos where to try and see them closer up. We cycled right through the park and never caught a glimpse of the sea arriving at the other end where there was a bar (coffee great) and a very bossy lady whose husband she told us bred bulls for fighting and she wanted us to go and stay with them. When she realized there was no way we were doing that she all of a sudden wasn’t so friendly and they left – phew! It was our first real conversation in Spanish and it was pretty good, if she hadn’t been quite so pushy we would have liked to see how the bulls are reared, but I was worried we might be kidnapped and never seen again!
We eventually caught up with the flamingoes which are very elegant and these ones are particularly clever. They used to migrate back to Africa in the winter but now don’t bother as there is a good source of the shrimps they like in the salt marshes here. However they can’t nest as it is too open and the magpies and lynx steal their egg, so they nest near Malaga 200 miles away, hatch, then fly back to Sanlucar every day to collect food for the 1 chick. Sounds exhausting!
On Monday we thought we’d better be organized about this coming weekend so cycled to Costa Ballena which is close to Rota and the Wells’ boat and there are 4* hotels doing deals. But before that we visited all the sights and churches to be seen in Sanlucar idling away the time until we could go to Hidalgo for the tour. As we suspected there was only the two of us wanting to do the trip so without much reluctance the lady on the desk turned us away. So off to Ballena, amazingly there is a cycle path from Sanlucar to Ballena so we bowled along that very confidently and arrived about an hour and a half later to find a huge holiday complex, thousands of villas and flats all looking a little tired but perhaps that’s just because we are out of season.
The price of a room when face to face with the hotel receptionist is 10% more than booking on the internet so we cycled back to Sanlucar and booked online – how crazy is that!!
Now after 3 months the haircut I had before leaving Dorset (and I don’t need many) had run it’s course and it was time for a ‘trim’. I didn’t fancy the chrome and glass ladies jobs which are everywhere so asked in a ‘gents outfitters’ where I should go. He grabbed a yoof who happened gamboling past and told him – take this man to the barbers! And he did. I had written down in Spanish – just a trim, a very little off poor favor! Do you speak French he asks, um yes and it turned out he had been 35 years in Sanlucar but came from Lausanne and had spotted Vivi’s Verbier fleece and was over the moon at the connection to his old home. Afterwards we went to an Italian restaurant where the waitress’s mother was French and her father Italian so again we spoke French, so multilingual us (and sorry Harriet but Mum says she needed the fleece more than you!!)