Andalucia 8

Tags

Acebuche, Andalucia, Andalusia, Andujar, Charente, Doñana, Durer, granite, Great piece of turf, Guadalquivir, Jandula, Naturetrek, Sierra Morena

From El Rocio to Andújar and beyond, Wednesday to Friday. Taking a rest after our last morning drive at El Rocío, we set off at midday for the three-hour drive, broadly following but sadly not aware of the Guadalquivír river, to our second hotel, the Hotel los Piños, 14 kilometres above Andújar, in the eastern  Sierra Morena.  But first we went backwards a little into the National Park, to have a picnic lunch at a lovely visitor centre, El Acebuche (the ‘wild olive tree’ already noted in El Rocío).  The temperature was rising (from about 25°C in Seville to about 30°C at the end of the week), but as long as one was in the shade, the dry heat was very welcome.  The visitor centre was informative:

National, Natural, Parks etc in Andalucia. Doñana is the orange patch to the west, on the Atlantic, and the Sierra Morena the central and smallest green patch at the north.  The very tip at the south, on the Straits of Gibraltar, is Tarifa, near where our migration-geek Naturetrek guides, Simon and Niki live. Gibraltar itself is the little southward-pointing spur just to the east.

El Rocío is where the dark and light green parts meet up with the yellow, and Acebuche is nearly at the coast to the south south-west of the town.

“Travelling without frontiers”

An unusual sundial.  It works both sides, depending on where the sun is.

The scenery changed as we drove: Our all-day outing the following day showed the dry landscape of the Sierra scattered with boulders (Pictures also snatched from moving vehicle).

Taken from a picnic spot as we had lunch, overlooking the…

reservoir of the Jándula, a tributary of the Guadalquivír

Arty-farty picture taken that day. (Ever since becoming aware of Dürer’s wonderful painting, ‘Great piece of turf (1503)’ I have been very sensible of the beauty of clumps of grass, etc.)

Sitting around looking for wildlife, no 23

Returning to barracks in the late afternoon, a view of distant mountains, not nearly as pretty, sadly, as when we had seen it in the cool mists of the morning

Another a-f picture. I loved the sun coming through the seed-heads.

The following morning, Friday, we got up very early indeed, before breakfast, in quest of our ‘prey’.  It was SOOOO COLD!  But beautiful.  We were very glad to get back to a good breakfast.

Clockwise round the table: Simon (guide-naturalist), Trish, David, Hugh, Stephen, Niki (guide-naturalist, and here waitress), Judy, Penny, Sharon, Margaret (hidden), Jason, and Henry.

Again we took a picnic lunch (Simon and Niki, our Naturetrek guides, did us proud each time!) and our stopping place made me nostalgic for my previous life in France. Where we ate so reminded me of lazy picnics on the banks of the Charente river – though perhaps there were no mountains in the French setting.

Sitting around looking for wildlife, no 34.

Interested in geology, I had been fascinated in these two days to see many extraordinary granite formations as we drove along, but I was able to get a photo of none of them.  This, right by our picnic spot, is a poor representative.  We ended the day where we had watched the dawn arrive hours earlier.  The final three posts will be about the wildlife we saw during those five days in the National and Natural Parks…

 

Andalucia 3

Tags

Andalucia, Andalusia, Andujar, Archivo de Indias, Cadiz, Columbus, Cordoba, Donana National Park, Guadalquivir, Guadalquivire Hydrographic Confederation, Seville

An exhibition of maps and other documents about the Rio (river)  Guadalquivir (from Arabic, al-Wadi al-Kabir, or Great Valley). I adore maps, and this exhibition was about the river that linked all three places I was to stay in over this coming week.  Flowing roughly east-west into the Atlantic alongside the Doñana National Park, the river is navigable to Seville, once as far as Cordoba, and rises beyond Andùjar near where we were to finish our wildlife trip.

The Archivo de Indias, right by the Cathedral and the Real Alcazar, contains all the records of Spanish exploration (I did not see the word ‘colonisation’ anywhere) of the Americas. Among their most precious documents are the letters to Columbus from Ferdinand and Isabella. The building itself was, for a comparatively short time in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Trade Exchange, but the silting up of the river, along with disease, caused the main trading port, and so the exchange, to be moved to Cadiz. After some years as what we would now called squats, the building was attributed, late in the 18th century, for its present national use. It underwent great renovation to make it suitable.
But I was there for maps and river. And what a fabulous exhibition it was. It was to mark the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, and its themes were the river as a resource, a threat (mainly from floods), a tamed space, its projects, and technical aspects, with just sufficient English captions to make it comprehensible to me. This is how the exhibits were mounted, in the midst of thousands and thousands of filing boxes. Here are just a very few of the photos I took. 

Floods of 1772-3

Palace of San Telmo, 1873.

 

Andalucia 2

Tags

Andalucia, Andalusia, Archivo de Indias, Bizet, Carmen, Fabrica Real de Tabacos, Guadalquivir, Hotel San Alonso XIII, Iglesia de la Magdalena, Iglesia Santa Ana, La Giralda, Mérimée, Murillo, Puente de Isabel II, Puente de San Telmo, Real Alcazar, Royal Tobacco Factory, Sevilla, Seville, Seville Cathedral, Torre d'Oro, Triana, University of Seville

Continuing my ’90-minute’ walk in Seville. After those shops (previous post) the guidebook said that I would come across the Iglesia de la Magdalena, built in 1709 on the site of an earlier Moorish mosque. So I just walked straight past this of course.But it turned out to be the side entrance. Despite the fact that a mass was in progress, I was encouraged to walk around at the back and sides of the church by a member of the congregation standing by to greet visitors. The building proved to be anything but plain on the inside.

A reminder of Seville’s naval triumphs

And when, continuing on my route, I went round to the front of the church, it was more recognisable as such.I went on to the Triana district, the other side of the Guadalquivir river, over the Puente (bridge) de Isabel II, looking north
and looking south.Can’t resist an indoor market.
My route then took me by many ceramic shops.I was beginning to want a drink and a sit, and I was delighted to find a quiet square, that of the 13th century Iglesia Santa Ana, Seville’s oldest church.

Still on the Triana side of the river, I continued along it for a short while, with a view of the Torre d’Oro.

Then back over the Guadalquivir River by the Puente de San Telmo, and into the Calle San Fernando, with a sighting of the Hotel Alfonso XIII, built between 1916 and 1928 for visitors to the Ibero-American Exposition, meant to boost the Andalucian economy, but sadly co-inciding with the Wall Street crash.

What’s this then? Ooh, it’s the University of Seville. Open to the public, so there’s another deviation from the walk.

First floor – and here, it would appear, there are actually some students

Pretty impressive for a university.  But even more impressive when you know it was a tobacco factory before that. Not just any old tobacco factory, but the Royal Tobacco Factory, employing 3000 women. You know, the one employing Mérimée and Bizet’s ‘Carmen’.  There were signs over doorways of former occupation, amongst them foremen, loos (still in use as such, though out of order this day) and stores.

 

Once more outside, I was still walking alongside the huge ex-tobacco factory, and was level with its chapel, when I noticed a wedding party arriving, and managed to get a photo through the grill as the bride emerged from the car.

Note the head-dress!

Into the Jardines de Murillo, named for the painter,where I sat to eat an apple, all the lunch I needed after the very full breakfast and in the great heat. Looking at my map, I realised that I was not far from the Archivo de Indias. I had seen advertised a temporary exhibition there which had really caught my eye. Put the words ‘maps’ and ‘river’ together, and they are a magnet to me. So I diverted,

On my way I noticed a tour guide pointing out this garden.  No idea what it was.

A first sighting of the Cathedral

A first sighting of the Real Alcazar, (‘Royal Fortress’)

and serendipitous further diversion took me past – or rather into – a nougat shop where I bought a large bar of the softer version, with tropical fruits, with the thought that I might well return.

 

(The next post will be exclusively concerned with the map and river exhibition and the building in which it was housed.)

Afterwards, it was time for another sit-down, and a drink, of fizzy water this time. And a photo of a sleeping cat which didn’t move the whole of the time I was there.

Back to my appointed route

A young woman had been idly stroking this cat in a quiet square, as she read a book.

Approaching the Giralda.And back to my hotel, via the Plaza de San Francisco and the Ayuntamiento once more. Too exhausted to explore more widely, I just took tapas in the hotel’s own restaurant later on that evening.