Hola, anyone still here? I’ve been away for a while, working, learning, travelling… Here are my latest Notes from Spain…
1. Only in Spain do the lesser mountain chains look as good as this….
That’s a corner of the Gredos mountains. We spent a weekend recently in Avila, from where we made the hour journey up to the Gredos range, starting with a coffee in the Parador de Gredos, and taking the lovely circular walk through the pine forest below. At reception they’ll give you details of picnic spots up the road by sparkling streams, and directions up to the snow-bound Plataforma de Gredos where walkers head up to tackle the nearby peaks. You’ll need a car.
2. Only in Spain can you go on retreat in tiny valleys lost deep at the end of dirt tracks in magical pine-covered national parks, as far off the grid as you can get…
Only in Spain do you discover that when you walk up the hill behind the house, you get hell of a surprise when you finally get to look over the ridge at the top: a hundred-mile view you never imagined could be there, of a million olive trees rolling across the plains of Jaen below…
This was, ‘El Camino Natural’, a very special place If you are a yoga-meditation-retreat kind of a person.
3. Only in Spain, as we discovered to our wide-eyed horror, might the owner of a very rural guest house investigate the smell of gas (i.e. possible gas leak!) in your room by running a lit match along the rubber pipe connecting the gas ‘butano’ bottle to the boiler on the wall…
4. Only in Spain do you find stacks of crisps piled up against shop windows…
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 