Thursday 27 Feb 2014

We enjoyed Granada and the campsite was ideally placed, but at this time of year it's quite cool and so we departed to try and find some warmth.

The weather forecast showed it being a lot warmer at the coast and to the west, so we returned to our plan of heading for Portugal. Last year we spent an enjoyable couple of weeks at El Puerto de Santa Maria, just across the bay from Cadiz and as we fancied a return trip to the city, we set the navigation systems for there.

Round the Granada "rondo", we headed out along an auto-via, and later onto a good ordinary road, once again passing through varying landscapes from industrial, through intensive agriculture then into the mountains again - Scotland will never seem the same.

Here are a few more of the photos taken along the route:

The airport's over there somewhere!

Mountain village

Mountain!

A convent, we think

Olvera, a typical "white town" with church on the hill

General view descending towards Cadiz

We stopped for lunch outside a motor racing track (Jerez?), not being able to find the sign-posted services off the auto-via, before the final few miles around Jerez de la Frontera, which is a large centre for the sherry industry. El Puerto de Santa Maria was once the main port for sherry and still has connections. More roundabout art demonstrates.

Sherry barrels at El Puerto de Santa Maria

Stopped off at a Carrefour hypermarket, situated within a Metrocentre type retail complex, to stock up - we plan to stay a week. Then the satnav took us unerringly to Las Dunas campsite, where we stayed last year. It's so easy going back as they have all the records on computer and check-in takes but a few moments.

We were told that the site was busy as it was the start of Carnival this weekend, so we'll have something new to see. Directed to a nice sunny spot (we'll have to see about those flies!) the kettle was soon on and we settled down to some chill-out time.