Retired? What now?

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  • Coast to mountain – Aracena

    The drive from Sanlucar up to Aracena takes around two and a half hours, and you have to allow for navigating the multi-lane motorways around Seville.  The land around Sanlucar is flat – well, gently rolling at best – mostly empty fields but with the occasional young olive tree plantations and the (very) occasional, small…

  • Jamón – emblem of Andalusia

    And probably much of the rest of Spain too. WARNING: this post isn’t for the squeamish, or for those who don’t appreciate seeing where their meat comes from. Pork products – ham, chorizo, salchichon, tocino… I could go on but I’m now drooling a bit – have been associated with Spain for ever, it seems. …

  • Sanlucar de Barrameda (Southwest Spain- again)

    We love Southwest Spain – both the coast and the mountains – and one of its many advantages is finding warmer weather into November. The start of this trip was no different to many others of ours in this area:  a flight to Seville, picking up a car, driving to Carmona and spending our first…

  • La Spezia (but mostly Porto Venere)

    La Spezia, one of Italy’s most important Naval ports, very much a working city, jumping off point for tourists rushing up to the Cinque Terre and just over an hour away from Pisa airport – the last one being one of the reasons we chose to finish our trip here. Another (and more important reason)…

  • The Cinque Terre

    The Cinque Terre National Park is famous for its five villages: Rimaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. The area was first settled in pre-Roman times, with the current villages taking shape in the Mediaeval period: by the 11th century, the area was mentioned by name.  Due to the predations of various types of…

  • To Moneglia

    Small, not included in many guidebooks other than a reference to it being a good base outside the Cinque Terre –  we had lowish expectations of Moneglia. After a bit of a faff waiting for our bill (due to a name confusion, our room had been charges to someone else), we left Camogli and headed…

  • Camogli – sea, hills, walks and wealth

    The train ride between Ventimiglia and Genoa was purported to be picturesque, and lovely, and interesting, and all those positive adjectives.  Which was odd as much of the time after leaving Bordighera was spent either in tunnels (between just before San Remo almost until Imperia) or slightly inland from the coast or behind unattractive modern…

  • A walk from Seborga

    Seborga, up in the hills behind the coast, is a quaint village of beautiful views and murky history.  Although it is perfectly possible to walk up and back, we took the minibus for one leg.  Up, naturally! Buses are few and far between and the timetables on the various bus stops don’t always agree with…

  • Bordighera – a charming stopping point

    Bordighera has a long past, with Paleolithic remains in the area and some Roman remains – it is, after all, on one of the main Roman routes into France, the Julia Augusta.  In the early part of the fifth century, a north African hermit (possibly from Egypt) or anchorite called Ampelio arrived in Bordighera, bringing…

  • A coastal railway journey to Italy

    The coastal route between Marseilles and Nice is marked up as a scenic railway route on our giant map of European railway lines.  Trying to establish exactly which route went which way was a bit tricky and despite my efforts to ensure that we definitely took the scenic route, there were some time constraints.  Scenic…