La Antilla to Ayamonte

Sunday 13th December.
La Antilla to Ayamonte
OK Alec is finally going to get his wish and visit Portugal – well maybe tomorrow but we are ‘that close’ there are even signs to it. As we cycled out of town we noticed an open air fruit, veg and meat market so knowing we had a lot of cycling ahead we bought a picnic of baguette, tomato, Serrano ham, figs and bananas. Oh and a bar of chocolate! The sky was blue there is no wind and the road freshly built with EU money – once again we were rolling!
The route to Ayamonte is along the coast but after Isla Cristina you pick up the Via Verde (incidentally in case I forget this disused railway line was originally put there to carry the olives to the factories for processing) again which being an old railway line is straight but has fallen into disrepair over the last five years since funds were last provided to make it a ‘camino’ or as we’d say ‘footpath’. It isn’t easy to find but an old chap dragging his motorbike into his house told us with a mixture of shouting and sign language and lo and behold we found it. At the start was a ramshackle house with more furniture outside than in (a guess: we weren’t invited in) and a man, dog, several cats and a cockerel all sharing the same sofa and a donkey looking on possibly wondering if he could squeeze on too. The route runs through salt marshes which are spectacularly flush with water birds, flamingoes looking pale compared to the ones in Donana (no pink shrimps around here), black backed storks (didn’t know they existed) and I saw my first Avocet – spectacular!
We meandered along arriving in Ayamonte where the Guadiana River runs between Spain and Portugal. Cycling about to orientate ourselves we fell upon the ferry to Portugal - just leaving. With spontaneity unknown to us we leapt aboard and 10 minutes later arrived in Vila Real de San Antonio. From Spain it looked rather exotic and we had spied a colonial looking hotel where we planned to stay. We thought that life moves quite slowly in Spain, but in this particular town, it was almost at a standstill. The glamorous hotel turned out to have broken windows, it’s roof stoved in and the doors firmly closed by a chain and substantial padlock. Undaunted we cycled the streets in search of lodging, stopped for refreshment in the square complete with Christmasy ice rink, children and carols played on pan pipes. But what really spoiled it for us was Noddy Holder’s – It’s Christmas – somehow that song on pan pipes to us was missing the point a bit. On the other hand Chris De Burgh’s ‘A Space Man Came Travelling’ sounded pretty good!
Anyway after a fruitless search for accommodation we caught another ferry back and only just managed to find a hostel in Ayamonte. And it’s at times like this that you realize the ‘Meynard Keynes rules of supply and demand’ still apply. This was a real dog’s bottom of a hostel, freezing cold, no breakfast and they whacked us 50E for the night! Today we are in the 5* Campo de Golf at El Rompido (yes again, it’s on the route back) absolute luxury and it’s – the same price.
Two remarkable things happened today, firstly we saw a swallow heading north – idiot does he not know it’s snowing in Madrid. Secondly creeping from our frozen billet we had an excellent supper, but our waiter – a very chatty and Vivi says ‘good looking’ Portuguese explained to us that this year’s poppy harvest in Afghanistan was the biggest on record and that the Americans were only there so they could fly the empty planes back to the USA stuffed full of Heroin! We didn’t like to disagree and spark another international incident.