Greetings from Seville

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Greetings from Seville

What a busy time we've had. Sara's mum had generously arranged an apartment for us in Seville for Christmas. We left the boat in Chipiona and travelled by bus to Seville for a month on dry land.

Seville is a lovely city with strong Arab architectural influences. The city has been occupied by a variety of nationalities from the Visigoths of Germany to Carthaginians and the Phoenicians who arrived 3000 years ago. The Guadalquivir River reaching 55 miles down to the Atlantic is what has made Seville strategically important. The river was blocked at its mouth (Chipiona) as recently as the Second World War.

The city, famed for its 'Seville Oranges' which are harvested in January and shipped to the UK for marmalade production. Huge farms outside the city called Haciendas crop oranges and olives, most of the streets in the old city are lined with orange trees. The cathedral is an amazing structure, built over an 800 year period is the second largest cathedral in the world. The detail inside is breathtaking, definitely not DIY! Outside behind the rear entrance running up to Christmas glass fronted temporary shops display all manner of nativity characters for you to purchase. This is something the locals take very seriously; we witnessed one lady with a tape measure checking if the proposed purchase would fit on the shelf.

Other sights include the bullring which is worth seeing but a 4 Euro tour has you in and 20 minutes later, as you pass through a small gate, you find yourself out on the street and the door shuts behind you - tour over!!!

The twentieth century saw the development of the city (since its commercial heydays in the 18th century) by a continuous series of expos. The American expo of 1929 entailed building a series of buildings in the style of the host country, like Chile or Paraguay. These buildings have since been acquired by a variety of bureaucratic agencies as Seville expanded through the regeneration afforded by the expos, shrewd move Huh? The most recent expo was in 1992 when 40 million visitors attended. These buildings are now large research, high tech enterprises and a university.
The Sevillians are proud of their heritage and ancient monuments, some of which are only 15 years old. It seems they spend a load of cash developing their infrastructure paid for by the visitors, which are subsequently bought for alternative uses. If however a structure doesn't find a new home it’s simply abandoned, such as the monorail, which is sad because as it degrades it is just left to rot no matter how obvious it is to the visitor. Still manana. Seville does have some stunning river bridges built for the 92 Expo'.

On one occasion we witnessed the Christmas bike run, lots of noise and exhaust, much as you would expect, (and of course a few show off boys with toys, to supplement their deficiencies in other areas,) which finishes at the Plaza de Espana. This semi circular building part of the 1929 expo houses a very small military museum, which whilst free, we were denied access to as we couldn’t produce a passport. From what we could see it housed old uniforms and lead figures of old battles, didn't seem to house any state secrets! The horse drawn taxis running around the tourist traps appear run mostly by gypsies; their enterprising wives are unsurprisingly to be found at the Plaza de Espana selling the lucky heather. Kevin was once cursed in Canterbury by a gypsy for refusing to pay for her gift. At Sara's suggestion, not wishing a repeat curse he plucked a sprig from the nearest hedge, when approached offered his 'Lucky Hedge' to the witch, who gave him a filthy look and walked off speechless. Deuce!!!

It would be wrong to forget to mention Seville’s part in the evolution of Flamenco, which also comes from the gypsies. Flamenco is both dance and music. We were surprised at the number and quality of music shops, catering for flamenco, classical and more contemporary genres. There was nothing musical you could not buy off the shelf in Seville. We bought a guitar to play on board for an astonishing 75 euros. Kevin could have spent thousands in the drum shop, fortunately or unfortunately we have neither the money nor the space available.

The Andalucian parts of Spain’s cultural needs are the responsibility of 'The Junta de Andalucia' and cover a diverse range of activities from museums to marinas. Mostly they seem to provide an excellent service, although tourist information offices that are closed at lunchtime and weekends and often secretive about events are not their finest work. However the prize for the biggest load of cods goes to the individual who contracted the exhibition of the life’s works of one Stanley Brouwn. This 'artist' (who is apparently in the top five of his peers) has spent 40 years developing his own scale of measurement, counting the number of steps he takes on holiday and displaying them in a cabinet on small squares of paper. One display is of a one metre square drawn on a wall and entitled ' A one metre square', astonishing! Or perhaps the small piece paper stuck to the wall proclaiming you are now at this very moment in time x metres away from Stanley Brouwn. He has one room containing a cube of wood 1 foot square, let the photo tell the story. I suppose if you can imagine what it might be like for Einstein to display the workings of his theory of relativity, then Stanley Brouwn is a small schoolboy just discovering feet and inches. To his credit, I'm sure many of us have these obscure thoughts, (no?) but to have the balls to get someone to pay for a display of your mental ramblings deserves some recognition, if not a place in a sanatorium. Perhaps we missed the point entirely, was it to provoke anger or in our case, incredulous and helpless laughter.





One feature Seville shares with many Spanish towns are a love of dogs. The Spanish have an interesting solution to the problem of 'canine exhaust'. They have set out large tiled areas specifically for 'barker's eggs' and all of them interconnected. Although much smaller in Spain, they are very similar to what the English call a pavement. Seriously, there is much to berate about the UK, but there is also much to praise.

Christmas lunch was an unorthodox affair as the apartment had only a two ring cooker with no oven, so garlic prawns and parmesan chicken it was. As we hadn’t seen Tele for months, programs in any language were welcome, and Sara with the Spanish - English dictionary was trying to decipher the news headlines in real time which produced some misleading results. Of 20 channels only Eurosport was in English.

We enjoyed a philharmonic orchestral performance in the cathedral and the bell ringing on Christmas Eve. A new experience was the customary consumption of a peeled grape for each strike of midnight on New Years Eve, which would have been an even richer experience, had the bell ringers not gone home to watch the festivities on television.



If you fancy a weekend break, Seville is good place, good year round weather and plenty to see. If you get to Jerez by coach as well the experience improves hugely. Definitely a good place to visit if you want more than a ‘sunburn and Watney's Red Barrel’ type of holiday. On our return to Chipiona we cruised with our Canadian friends, whom we had met up with in Seville for new years, to Rota about 15 miles south.

Rota impressed as the cleanest and best kept town we have seen since Viana de Castello in northern Portugal. Its situation next door to the Rota US naval base that pays them 100 million euros per annum may have something to do with it. We all took a coach ride to Jerez for a day out to visit the Andalucian Riding School and the sherry tour at one of the famous bodegas. Jerez is home to all the famous sherry names like Tio Pepe, Sandeman, Harvey’s Bristol Cream, Domecq Amandillo etc.



The horses were amazing; you have to see to believe what a horse can do with expert training. The display was in a 2000 seat stadium where we couldn’t take any pictures. But we have some poor quality video footage we shot on the quiet, let us know if you would like a copy



We didn’t have enough time for the sherry tour, but did manage to join a tasting session.


Sherry is now available on board and is the latest addition to Kevin's fast growing stable of entoxicants. Back on board we had a short sail to Puerto Sherry marina to catch up with the Canadians who were having a sail repaired. From there just a 5 mile hop to Cadiz which we were looking forward to. Amazingly despite all its famous history, Cadiz is only a very small city which we walked around in a day easily. The shopping is more contemporary than even Seville and the fish, meat and vegetable market was superb, outside was even a flower market.

The following day we set off for Barbate as our last stop before Gibraltar. The day started at dawn (around 8.00) as we motored around the rocky headland and south to barbate. The weather picked up and we motor sailed in strong winds and lumpy seas. At 13.45 while looking around we noticed a cloud with an ominous look about it. The camera caught the formation of a small twister which blew itself out a few seconds later.
About one hour from Barbate Jeff on Masala radioed to say that his engine had failed some time earlier and would like a tow into Barbate. Fortunately he was able to sail into the entrance, and as we were ahead we had checked out the marina for tying up. As Masala came around the pier head we closed and tied them alongside and motored into the harbour and on to a double berth. It transpired that Masala had a clogged fuel filter, quite common particularly when refuelling, and the diesel bug had clogged up the filter with a substance that looked like clear marmalade (perhaps he got it in Seville). After two nights in Barbate we all left early for Gibraltar, but you'll have to wait a few days for our fun and games 'On the Rock' report.

Bye for now,

Kevin & Sara

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