Thursday 17th December.
Huelva-Jerez de la Frontera
At about 3 .a.m. the earth moved and it was not a pleasant experience! We were woken by huge shakes and bangs and initially thought it might be the couple next door. However, as our bed started moving across the room we realized it was an earthquake. Luckily it only lasted a few seconds but long enough to make for a sleepless night. Various people in the high rise flats opposite were hanging around on their balconies too. The weather had gone from very cold to pretty warm and the sea was very rough as we had biked along the coast so perhaps that was a sign of some unsettlement on the sea bed. No one mentioned anything at breakfast or on the local news but Harriet tells us it measured 6.3 on the Richter scale just off the coast of Portugal and Huelva. We both felt quite out of sorts for the whole day, as though our bodies had been given a good rattling.
We biked along the coast, (me checking for suspicious cracks in the roads) to look at the rather magnificent statue of Christopher Columbus at the mouth of the river Tinto. He has been looking out to sea since 1929 although it looks like a much more modern statue than that. The sun was blazing down so we had a beer and some olives in a bar beside him and then headed back to Huelva station to catch a train to Jerez (sherry fix coming up). We met a lovely girl on the train who is teaching English in Huelva, originating in Vienna, and had worked in France, China, England and is now debating where to go next. We felt most ignorant struggling through 2 extra languages.
Jerez station is sensational, all pale blue tiles and a very ornate building. We had made a Lastminute.com booking for something called The Tryp Hotel which when we arrived was a bit sniffy about cyclists,(they charged us 8euros to park each bike in the basement) but who cares, this is real luxury! We had a very quiet supper of meatballs (Albondegas cooked in sherry, a favourite around here, the name rolls off the tongue quite easily compared to other things on the menu) in town and the waiter told us that tomorrow is a holiday so there will be party time in the evening - Ole’!