Martin Fuggle Downunder

I am still in the early stages of setting up my new Drupal site. There is a plethora of information to be found about Drupal on the web and one of the more informatitive sites (other than the Drupal sites themselves) is Nick Lewis' top ten Drupal modules you can't do without. It is a little out of date and it would be good if someone had the time and inclination to bring it right up to date. Nevertheless it is still very useful.

Feeling much better, we set out for breakfast and then walked to the Plaza di Spagna - a few thousand miles away from the hotel. It wasn't all that interesting, so we bought some fans and walked even further to see some stuff in a building in the gardens. Most of the stuff was from the 1970's and we had some items that were on display at home! Graham and Tania had an idea that they would walk a few thousand more miles to the other side of Seville so we declined and tried to find our way back to the hotel.

On the way we stopped in a very pretty square and had a pleasant lunch which was only spoilt by the news from Peter that we had been burgled at home and he was going over to Kew to meet Judy and the police. It sounds as if they had jemmied open a window into the sun room and pinched the new TV but not much else which was a bit of a relief.

Seville is keeping up to it's reputation as the 'frying pan' of Spain. The temperature today was around 30° C and it looks as if it will be hotter tomorrow. We started off with some breakfast across the road from the hotel and then walked to the cathedral. Graham was keen to start the day at the Alcazar Gardens since the Cathedral didn't open until 11.00am. However it was open when we got there at 9.30am and we wandered in to have a look around. It is the largest cathedral in floor area in the world and just to prove it they had the Guinness Book of Records' certificate on display!

After our farewells to Elaine and Ian we set off for Seville. It was not a long way so we decided to stop off at Arcos de la Frontera. It was another Spanish white town and not all that interesting or different from the others that we have seen. Nevertheless we walked up to the old town and the only things of interest were the small shop that Jenny found where we were able to buy beautiful pottery very cheaply. We bought a few egg cups and small plates that might be OK to put on the wall at Deans Marsh - always assuming we can get them home.
We had lunch at a place called El Convent and it was a very old monastery which had been converted to a beautiful restaurant. We just had one course of artichokes, prawns and ham which sounds pretty boring but in fact it was superb.
After lunch we drove to Seville and had all sorts of trouble finding the hotel. Eventually we found it and Jenny and I stayed in the hotel whilst Tania and Graham went for a walk and then dinner. I had developed a sore throat and was feeling pretty awful and it was for that reason that we didn't eat out. Instead we got room service and had some gazpacho and a sandwich.

Today we went for a drive in the Grazalema National Park. Elaine had suggested that there were two 'white villages' that are really worthwhile seeing. We could also have stopped off at some caves in the national park but Tania felt she had seen enough caves so we didn't press the matter and visit them, instead we drove to Grazalema. The national park was beautiful and Jenny spotted cork trees where the cork bark had been removed leaving a strange looking tree trunk with a part with no bark and a part with thick bark. Grazalema was very pretty and had fabulous views down the hill that it was built on and it was completely white - no houses were able to be painted any other colour.
The drive to Zahara was through some of the most wonderful scenery we have seen in Spain, in fact in Europe. The wild flowers were wonderful with all sorts of colours and plants along the side of the roads and up the hills. We stopped in Zahara for some lunch and then drove back to Ronda in the middle of the afternoon.
I spent a bit of time talking with Elaine and her mother. They were both from Southampton so there was a bit of common ground given the fact that my mother had lived for so long in Ringwood. Jenny had a swim and then we played table tennis before dinner again at the hotel.

Breakfast was great. We ate in the hotel dining room and had bacon and eggs for the first time.

Elaine and Ian are very good hosts and know the hospitality industry very well. Ian came to Spain from Nottingham about twenty years ago and worked on the Costa del Sol long before it became the concrete jungle that it is today. He met Elaine and they started a restaurant not far from Malaga and sold up four or five years ago when they bought the decrepit mill and renovated it into the hotel as it is now. They opened about eighteen months ago and from our point of view they have done an excellent job. We felt as if we were the most special guests that they have ever had! They have three beautiful daughters who were born in Spain and speak perfectly good English and Spanish.

We drove into Ronda to look at the old part of town. The town sits across a gorge which is sensational. The gorge is short but is crossed by a fantastic bridge called the 'New Bridge' (in Spanish, of course) and the river that flows through the gorge below must be some four or five hundred meters below the top of the bridge. We took lots of photos.

We then visited the Bull Ring. This was an extraordinary experience and just as Ernest Hemingway described it in his books about bull fighting. The ring itself was beautifully presented and in the hot sun it was strange to be in the middle of the ring where so many bull fights had taken place. The museum in the area underneath the seats contained an interesting history of bull fighting and photos of some of the best known matadors from in and around Ronda. There was a family called Romero which seemed to be the most respected matadors and their lineage started in the seventeen hundreds. There is a place beside the bull ring that is now used for training horses and we saw some horses doing their dressage practise as well as the stables and the places where the bulls were stored before they were let out into the bull ring.

We also looked at a couple of other places before driving back to the hotel where we had dinner before retiring to bed.

We packed up and collected the car from La Caleta and drove down through Motrill towards Malaga. We encountered incredible delays on the roads but have no understanding why. Once we got past Motrill we went along the coast road and found a small place off the coast road called Herradura and we stopped for a light lunch. It was marginally better than the rest of the places we went past which were just a concrete jungle. We continued along the coast and turned inland along a minor road towards Ronda and the hotel. The scenery was pretty but it took us along time to get to Ronda and most of the day was spent driving along fairly difficult roads. We saw two truck crashes both of them rather nasty and whether or not anyone was injured is unknown but they didn't look good.
After a long day we got to the hotel jut out of Ronda and were greeted by Elaine and Ian. They made us feel very comfortable and the hotel was lovely and in a location which was beside a small creek with a couple of stone bridges at either end of the hotel. We settled into our room and went for a meal at the Dom Benito just a short walk down the road. Gerry and Mary, a couple from Ireland, joined us and we had a good evening. The food was good and Jenny ordered a cutlet. What arrived was the biggest shoulder of lamb imaginable. It was very good but just so much food.

We planned a trip into the Sierra Nevada and Tania had done some research so we decided to visit three villages high up in the Sierra Nevada range of mountains. We collected the car and headed off down the E902 towards Motrill and turned off into the mountains. The views were fantastic and we went past some huge wind turbines on our way and eventually got to the small village of Panpanera. It was set on the side of the hill and entirely white. We parked and walked into the main square where we had a coffee and then looked at a number of the shops. The area is famous for the rungs that it makes and they were really beautiful - thick and very colourful. We really wanted to see if we could buy one or two for the new extension at home when we finally do it. We couldn't take them with us so we tried to see if they could send them to Australia but it all proved to be too difficult.
We drove on past Bubion and stopped off in Capiliera (at least I think that's what it was called). It was a place where walkers started walks into the Sierra Nevada mountains and we met some people who had walked and skied from the snow covered mountains to the small restaurant where we were having lunch in the small square. After lunch I was waiting for Jenny who was looking at the shops and heard a group of people who sounded as if they came from Whitley Bay. I plucked up courage to ask them and I was about ten miles out - they were stunned and we talked a bit about the walks they had done and we all went on our way.
We drove back to Granada by doing a big circle and eventually got back to the hotel after a long day in the Sierra Nevadas. After a little while we wandered out for dinner - a pretty ordinary meal of lamb cutlets.

We had met a group of Australians in the hotel who came from Kew, Hawthorn and Malvern areas and got talking to them. As usual it turned out that we knew many of the same people but one on them, Prue Burdeu from memory, knew Mer Handbury from school days and it sort of went on from there. She also knew Pam Cheetham and I am certain if we had spent more time we would have found any number of other links. It really is amazing that we have met so many people during our travels who come from Melbourne.
After breakfast we had to walk up the Alhambra to make sure that we got our tickets before 10.00am. It was a strenuous walk that took about twenty minutes but once we got to the top of the hill and collected our tickets we were able to get into the Alhambra. We bought a very good guide book about the Alhambra and Granada which will fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the history of the cathedral as well as the Alhambra itself. We wandered around and looked at parts of the Alhambra before queueing to go into the palaces and the General Life exhibits. The palaces are absolutely stunning and the General Life gardens just out of this world. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen and I will never forget the three palaces and the exquisite nature of the extensive gardens and the place that water played in the design of the interior and the exterior.
We didn't leave the gardens until about 2.00pm by which time we had walked our legs off and were ready for lunch. We went to the place that T&G had found earlier where they serve large potatoes with stuff in them. I had Rabo de Toro (Oxtail stew) and the others had their potatoes and we went back to the hotel for a well earned rest.
At night we went for a short walk and had the worst pizzas in the world. They were absolutely disgusting.

Breakfast at La Puenta was a bit of a challenge. There was the normal continental stuff including cold meats, cheese, etc., etc. However the room was narrow and the things took a bit of getting used to. For example the toaster had separate buttons for toasting the top and bottom of the toast - so with only the bottom one switched on it was hard to see the top of the toast getting brown. Jenny had a couple of pieces of toast which were absolutely burnt on one side and perfectly white on the other side. It was things like this that caused us a bit of bother.
We organised for the hotel to make our bookings to see La Alhambra and that was set for Saturday morning so we decided we would look at the Cathedral and things in the city centre. We strolled around the squares and took in the smells of all sorts of spices, the market and our morning coffee before going into the cathedral. It was a fabulous cathedral and the interior was stunning. Apart from Sienna it was the most beautiful cathedral I had seen. We didn't manage to get a guide so we were not all that knowledgeable about the history of the cathedral but it was started in 1521 and the Burial Chapel next door holds some of the secrets of the links between the Spanish throne and the English. I will have to buy a book to read up the details of the various relationships and the history of the Granada cathedral.
We walked to a small place for lunch where we had the 'menu of the day'. It was especially good. We started with gazpacho, then had a grilled bream (dorada) and finished with a cr