Day 7 - Sunday in Arcos

Sunday in a small Spanish town is quiet!  

So we revisited the narrow twisty streets of Arcos

up the white-washed streets

to the top of the hill

and then some more fat juicy cherries and Scrabble before our last night in Arcos 

Tomorrow Seville!

Day 6 - A further day in the pueblos blancos

You'll remember that we missed off a couple of the villages (Benamahoma, Setenil, Grazalema - apparently Spain's wettest place).  Saturday dawned with a bright sun so it was a day to enjoy the countryside again.  


Most of the sunflower fields were over, the flowers burnt brown and hanging their heads, heavy with seeds, like legions of little old men, 

though occasionally we'd round a corner to an unexpected sheet of bright yellow, stretching into the distance like something from The Wizard of Oz!
  

  

Our first "missed" pueblo blanco was Setenil - an interesting spot, built around a rock (sadly a fuzzy shot as the traffic was shocking and zero places to park) but you get the drift of a town literally structured around a huge mass of stone

and with a nice high-spot to overlook the sweep of the village; we especially admired the olive groves in the background : so ordered, running like strips of green corduroy.

After a fine tapas lunch in the sun, we stopped in Grazalema, to discover that the village fiesta had been the previous day

(including a bull-run if the festival lighting was to be believed...)

No blood on the pavements though!

Day 5 - Back on the road : Cadiz

Last time we were in Andalucia, we loved Cadiz, so I had high hopes.  Sure enough, despite being a cloudier (and a bit cooler) day, we loved the cathedral

stretched our legs walking the waterfront promontory.

caught some impromptu entertainment (I "ole"d like a local)

and ascended the Torre Tavira for bird's eye rooftop 360 views

Day 4 - A quiet day in Arcos

After a long day of driving for Duncan yesterday, we decided to stay closer to home and explore our own pueblo blanco a bit more.  Hilly is is the word that springs to mind

  
Though of course that does mean great views over the surrounding olive groves, acres of waving sunflowers, fields of golden mown straw...

...from the left-hnd of the two tall buildings below (the castle - "privately owned and occupied" apparently!);

the right-hand building being a fine parish church.

Day 3 - Ronda and the pueblos blancos

The guides give various winding, twisting circuits through the Andalucian countryside via the numerous white villages, nestled so close in the valleys and atop the rolling green hills that you can almost see them lined up like beacons...

Our ambitious day-trip took in Ronda, chief of the pueblos blancos, as well as many of the smaller ones : Ubrique, Gaucin, Jimena de la Sierra

 

along corkscrew roads through gorgeous countryside 

to Ronda

Regrettably (or maybe just as well, given it was already going dark by the time we got back) we missed part of the pueblos route and same of the villages so maybe we'll have to make another trip later in the week

Day 2 - Tipples in Jerez

Arcos is well-situated to give access to various sights and cities (this was broadly a re-run of a trip from 15 years ago so we had high hopes of the places we remembered so fondly).  We we decided to start with Jerez.

Almost all of the big sherry houses run tours but Sandeman was easy to park.  It turned out to be a good choice as the 1pm tour proved to be a private one for us alone, the guide informative and interesting, and (on a scorching day) the courtyard cool and airy

and the sherry tasting most enjoyable (even if one of us was driving - that's 6 glasses for me then please).

After lunch, and having overlooked quite how dead things would be on a hot July afternoon, we wandered in town by the cathedral and even caught up with the twenty-first century with a selfie...

JULY 2014 - VIVA ESPANA! Day 1 - Arcos de la Frontera

Badly organised as I was, most flights into southern Spain turned out to booked solid (even before the school holidays began!) but we squeaked onto a flight into Gibraltar, which was remarkable only for the cross-winds caused by the Rock which meant that the pilot sharply aborted the landing and uttered the words ever passenger wants to hear : "Let's have another go at that, shall we?"....

Safely on terra firma in Gibraltar, we crossed the border into Spain to collect our hire car and onward to the largest of the so-called pueblos blancos (white villages), Arcos de la Frontera,

with castle and church up on the hill, and the village tumbling down to the river

along steep narrow white-washed streets.

Our own little rented house was a quiet place, with one bedroom and a kitchen-diner gving way to a charming little courtyard (which was nominally shared but we had all to ourselves save for our hosts' Spanish water-dog and cat with the world's loudest purr)