We spent the last 6 days exploring a small corner of Cádiz province.
Can I just say how awesome it is to be able to get into our own car, drive for a few hours and be on holiday in a beautiful part of the same country? With the same great weather. I’m so British. I promise not to mention the weather again in this post.
We’d booked our first few nights of accommodation through airbnb and were delighted with our holiday pad. It was a simple farmhouse set on a 3 acre terraced plot, landscaped with a variety of fruit and other trees. The owner informed us that when he had moved in 15 years ago there hadn’t been any trees on the plot; that he and his family had planted them all in the time that they’d been there. He was clearly a keen gardener and the plot was very well tended to.
The accommodation was (in the middle of nowhere) a 5 minute drive (in the middle of nowhere) from Arcos de la Frontera, a beautiful whitewashed town appointed, seemingly impossibly, on a sharp cliff face. A very good work out pushing the buggy to the top of the town from where our car was parked at the bottom!
We didn’t really do anything other than wander around Arcos, but often that’s what I enjoy doing most when visiting new places. The streets were rather narrow which made for some challenging interactions between us and the vehicles using the roads. The views were stunning – out over very dry, undulating, Spanish agricultural land. And we stumbled across a falconry display, where the birds swooped worryingly close to our heads. We survived.
One of our highlights was breakfast on the first morning. We chose to go to a busy cafe at the lower end of town. We ordered 2 coffees, 2 waters and 2 toasts with Iberian ham. We were discussing how much we thought the bill would come to and guessed around €10. It ended up being €4.60. Mr H had to check whether he’d heard the waitress correctly.
Another memorable moment was discovering part of a recently shed snake’s skin on the terrace of our holiday pad. I was a little alarmed, but was reassured when Mr H pointed out that it did seem like quite a narrow snake. I did a scoot around the garden (and the house!) but didn’t find the snake. Phew.
Whilst staying near Arcos we also visited Jerez de la Frontera, probably best known for its sherry. More about that next time…
