SANLUCAR DE BARRAMEDA & CHIPIONA

Sanlucar de Barrameda, popluation 69k (similar to Folkestone), is one of the corners of the Sherry Triangle – Jerez de la Frontera and El Puerto de Santa Maria making the other two corners. The main difference of Sanlucar’s sherry is the manzanilla, a very dry fortified wine similar to the fino of the other two towns.

Its other main claim to fame is that both Columbus in 1493 and Magellan in 1513 set sail from its port on the river Guardalquiver when they set off to explore the Americas / circumnavigate the globe.

We cycled as close as we could to the Rio Guardalquiver where it flows into the Atlantic, broad sandy beaches soon turned into inaccessible areas where our path was impeded by the farming communities – smallholding after smallholding growing cabbages, cauliflowers, courgettes, onions, and crops hidden from view by netting and plastic which covered makeshift poly tunnels. The terracotta coloured alluvial earth was finely tilled and irrigation pipes lay like black snakes everywhere. Sheep, goats, chickens and dogs shared small enclosures. Between the parcels of land there were ditches and fragments of wasteland which we were sad to see covered in rubbish – cans, plastic bags and other fly-tipped no longer wanted items. Often on this wasteland were tethered horses and donkeys searching for vegetation amongst the rubbish.
This part of town was clearly poor and people worked hard on their plots of land leaving little time for aesthetics; quite a contrast with the other end of town where there were plush newly built villas on the seafront.

Heading further north to the salinas, or salt fields, there were ‘mountains’ of salt piled next to the ponds from where the white stuff was left after evaporation.

Suddenly the road ended and we found ourselves in Donana Natural Park again, a veritable oasis of calm with just the sound of the birdsong and breeze in the pine trees.

CHIPIONA

6 miles south-west of Sanlucar, where the coast ’rounds the corner’ towards Rota and Cadiz, lies Chipiona, population 19k (a little more than Hythe), which claims to have the tallest lighthouse in Spain.

Chipiona had a laidback vibe, mile after mile of deserted sandy beaches with villas that were shut up for the winter. it was like a ghost town.