{"id":3085,"date":"2022-03-17T07:38:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T07:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3085"},"modified":"2022-03-17T07:38:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T07:38:19","slug":"spain-10-tornados-and-bauxite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3085","title":{"rendered":"SPAIN 10. TORNADOS AND BAUXITE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sadly, the weather is looking wet, wet, wet for several days!\u00a0 Gordon and Pam, our Scottish neighbours have decided to turn tail and head for Portugal.\u00a0 We’re going to tough it out.\u00a0 We want to see Cordoba.<\/p>\n

But first we have the chance to revisit Sentenil.\u00a0 There are two roads into the village.\u00a0 The long, sensible route round the outside, and the shorter, less sensible route which leads inexorably (for about a kilometre) through the very middle, ending up emerging through a tunnel under the cliffs at what at first sight appeared to be a dead-end.\u00a0 The reason I know this may be obvious.\u00a0 Yeah, yeah!\u00a0 We took the short route!<\/p>\n

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On the plus side, we didn’t hit any walls, cars, vans or people, and, as we emerged we lucked into an easy parking space right in the centre.\u00a0 But, getting around the village was definitely easier on foot!<\/p>\n

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The next day, we visited Zahara.\u00a0 Quite ironic really, as EVERYTHING around here is plastered in fine red dust – from – you guessed – the Sahara.\u00a0 So while we went to Zahara, the Sahara came to us!\u00a0 The air quality has been listed as “extremely unhealthy” for several days.\u00a0 Now we know why we are seeing people walking in the country wearing masks.\u00a0 Forget Covid, they are keeping African sand dunes out of their lungs!<\/p>\n

Zahara de la Sierra is situated above a large, nearly empty reservoir.\u00a0 With memories of Sentenil deeply ingrained, and with Glenda forbidding any further upward travel, we parked at the bottom – the VERY bottom – of town and walked up – past several large easily accessible carparks.<\/p>\n

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… to the Iglesia Santa Maria de la Mesa and what would have been a fabulous view from the mirador – if we weren’t in a cloud!\u00a0 Glenda got chatting to an ex-pat lady who had lived in the village for 10 years.\u00a0 She recommended a restaurant in the next village – Grazelema.\u00a0 The Restaurante Torreon.\u00a0 17 kms away – so why does the sat nav say it will take 45 minutes?<\/p>\n

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Is it a duck or is it a kangaroo?\u00a0 No – it’s a plan of the road as it reached it’s summit at 1,180m.<\/p>\n

So now we know.\u00a0 The road is a continuous bend.\u00a0 In places, it’s just wide enough to squeeze past on-coming traffic of which there were just two bits – both small cars, fortunately.\u00a0 The outside edge is a 17 km row of concrete blocks to discourage off-road travel!\u00a0 We won’t be coming back this way, Barry!<\/p>\n

The only other things we met on the road as we rounded a blind bend were two Iberian Ibexes.\u00a0 Not sure who was more surprised – them or us!\u00a0 But they scarpered over the edge like greased lightening.\u00a0 (Clearly not my photograph!)<\/p>\n

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The meal at the Torreon was superb.\u00a0 We had one meal of the day at an attractively priced 12\u20ac plus items of the menu and shared (as normal!).<\/p>\n

Home via the (relatively) easy lower road to find our now nearly deserted hill-top campsite was exposed to devastating winds.<\/p>\n

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One of our neighbours suffered somewhat.\u00a0 An hour later and it was totally calm.\u00a0 Weird!<\/p>\n

Now to the bauxite.\u00a0 This mineral contains 10-20% aluminium.\u00a0 It’s mined at great expense transported at more expense and then smelted at even more expense.\u00a0 I have an alternative plan.\u00a0 Sweep the deep gutters along miles of Spanish roads and collect zillions of discarded drinks cans. These are nearly 100% aluminium and easily recycled.\u00a0 Just a thought!\u00a0 It must be a national sport.\u00a0 Drink a soda while driving and lob the tin.<\/p>\n

We are off for a couple of cans of Coke right now!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sadly, the weather is looking wet, wet, wet for several days!\u00a0 Gordon and Pam, our Scottish neighbours have decided to turn tail and head for Portugal.\u00a0 We’re going to tough it out.\u00a0 We want to see Cordoba. But first we… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain-22","category-travels-in-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3085"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}