England 2: Derbyshire

This afternoon(Oct12th)Steve and I went to the National Memorial Aboretum which commemorates all British servicemen killed in action since 1945. I was also fascinated watching a canal boat go through locks at Fradley Junction.
Today(Oct13th) Steve and I went to Calke Abbey, a National Trust "unstately home", because it has been left exactly as it was when the family moved out. It was a huge Baroque mansion with underground tunnels and a clutter of 18th century furniture and paintings, as well as an enormous collection of stuffed birds.Apparently the death duties were £25 million and almost half of their collection was sold to pay these. We went through Repton, which had a prestigious private school and a lovely old church. At night we went to a barn dance, complete with a caller to raise funds for the local church. Off to North Yorkshire all this week, so probably no wi- fi and thus no blogs for a while!

Photo blog of Rolleston-on-Dove

I have just spent a couple of hours wandering around this quaint little village. The old man in the church is the village historian and the Timaru Rollestons have ancestors buried here.St Mary's Church was built in 1130. This is also Mosley country where Oswald Mosley, who married Diana Mitford came from!

England 1:

Now back in England and so nice to stop! I flew up to Birmingham on Monday and am with Ali and Steve until I come home at the end of the month. They live in this lovely little village in Derbyshire. English chocolate box, complete with a close, brook and lovely old trees. The English countryside is so soft and green after the barren brown of Morocco. Today we drove up to Holywell in North Wales to see Ali's 91 year old mother. After coffee with her, we went to see Ali's brother Malcolm and we all went for a pub lunch. Malcolm lives in this stunning house in a lovely lakeside location, complete with gym and swimming pool(Southfork). It would make a fantastic up- market wedding venue or conference centre. The weather was a bit grey, but 'tis the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness', if my poetic memory is correct! We are going up to Yorkshire next week and to Poole in my final week.

Madrid three:

What a wonderful final day I have had in Europe. So much for a quiet day!! Margaret left at 10 am and I went straight to the Prado museum where I spent 3 hours. It is the wonderful National museum with a fantastic collection of the Golden Age Spanish painters - Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Murillo, Ribera, plus works by the Italian Renaissance painters - Rafael, Botticelli, Fra Angelico; also Durer, Brueghel, Rubens etc. It is a stunning gallery. The photo of me with Velazquez is outside this museum.
It was a gorgeous warm 28 degrees and because there was a demonstration, many of the bus routes weren't operating, so I did a lot of walking. There was a huge police presence with sirens, barriers and helicopters! I had a sangria and tapas for lunch in the lovely Plaza Major and because there's a football match tonight between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the square was buzzing! I am going to do a photo blog of all the funny activities. There was such a festive air, but I suspect it will be noisy tonight here as this hotel is full of football fans!! The big stadium is the Real Madrid stadium. To England tomorrow.

Granada

Well, I knew I was back in Spain last night! These buggers never sleep and there was an all- night party right outside my window! No wonder the shops don't open before 10am!
Granada is a lovely city with a very nice atmosphere. It is a university city and we were serenaded last night by some students from the music school.Unfortunately we only had time to visit the Alhambra here. It is sited on the hill above Granada.On the way up we saw some cave dwellings!
The Alhambra ( meaning 'red fortress') was amazing. It is a splendid example of moorish architecture built in the 12 th century constructed of tiles, stucco, plaster, bricks and wood. It had richly decorated rooms for concubines and is the last symbol of Muslim power in the Iberian peninsula and one of the most visited tourist attractions in Spain. 23 sultans reigned in the Alhambra before the Christians took it over in 1492. It had extensive gardens requiring 55 gardeners. We could have spent longer here, but it was teeming with tourists . Today we drove through La Mancha, well- known through Cervantes' Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote. In the book DQ thought that windmills were giants that he had to fight and we saw several in La Mancha! The landscape today was dry and hilly with olives the main crop, also vines where it was flat.There are over 200 varieties of olive in Spain.
Apparently Spain was one of the few countries which adhered to the Kyoto Protocol and there are more than 30,000 companies working in solar heating. I saw a whole paddock of solar panels ( see photo)We also saw lots of wind turbines on the Costa del Sol yesterday.
No wonder Spain is in crisis. Miguel pointed out a huge new development just outside of Madrid. It was row on row of apartments , complete with schools and shops, but a ghost town with no inhabitants. Apparently Manchester United paid 94 million euros for the soccer player, Ronaldo!
Anyway 4,000 miles later and it is off to England on Monday. I hope to go to the Prado Museum tomorrow and have a quiet day.

Tangier to Granada

A 4am start to get the early ferry crossing from Tangier to Tarifa and back onto Spanish soil. 800 km and 15 hours travelling including the ferry crossing today!! Apparently it is quite common for illegal immigrants to try and hide in the gap between the wheels of buses to try to get to Spain from Morocco. We saw some police being quite rough with such a man in Tangier. We drove past the Rock of Gibraltar, a British territory for the last 300 years and a tax haven, and along the Costa del Sol and much lusher vegetation. It has a lovely climate and apparently there are 170 golf courses in this region plus some very sumptuous mansions for the rich and famous.It is very touristy and developed, some of the beaches even have artificial sand. We lunched above Malaga, whose two most famous sons were Picasso and Anthony Banderos. A large area here was devastated by fire last September. We drove inland through rows and rows of olive trees, corn and asparagus with the typical white Spanish houses with tile orange tiled roofs.
Photos all taken from bus, hence poor quality. The blurry one is the Rock of Gibraltar in the distance!

Casablanca and Rabat

We drove on the motorway in fog for nearly 4 hours this morning through barren flat countryside to Casablanca. We arrived in bright sunshine at lunch time to huge traffic jams and the cars were parked bumper to bumper. I didn't see any trying to get out of their parks! Casablanca is the commercial capital and the biggest city in Morocco, with a population of 5 million and is famous for the film of the same name, starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. We saw one of the Rick's Cafes and a spectacular mosque on the water named after Hassam 2nd. It was an enormous building with beautiful green and blue tiles. Prior to the 15th century Casablanca was just a fishing village and it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755.It was a very plain, almost tatty city driving in, with continuous apartment blocks, each with multiple satellite dishes. In the city centre the architecture was almost art deco style, but quite delapidated and certainly not the romantic city we are led to believe it is. The water front had some attractive homes and we had lunch in McDonalds at La Corniche on the seaside!!!Several of us have a touch of Dehli Belly today, so we thought that Macca's chips would be a safe bet.
We arrived in Rabat at 5 pm.Rabat is the political capital of Morocco and dates back to the 12th century. It is located on the Atlantic Coast at the mouth of a river, with a pleasant maritime climate. It was a much more attractive city than Casablanca with jacaranda - lined avenues, broader streets and modernish Art Deco architecture. There were some beautiful homes here. We drove around Rabat, where we saw the king's palace in the Royal District and the mausoleum of King Mohammed 5th who ruled Morocco between 1926 and 1961. He is considered the ' father of independence' in Morocco. As usual the city was surrounded by a huge ochre wall and the Casbar fortress was on the coast. Rabat was a centre for pirates in the past. Unfortunately we have to be on the road at 4am tomorrow to catch the ferry at Tangiers before we go onto Granada! It will be a very long day on the bus, so an early night is beckoning.