Saturday 7th January 2017

Another beautiful day. This morning we walked on the beach next to our overnight parking place just south of Cadiz.

It was really sunny and warm.

We pondered on whether to have another go at parking in the historic centre of Cadiz but reasoned that on a Saturday after a public holiday it would be just as crowded as it was yesterday.

Instead we made the shortish journey north to the town of Sanlucar de Barrameda which is situated at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river which flows down here from Seville. I said in yesterday's blog that we hadn't seen any vines around Jerez. Today passing to the north west of the city we saw lots of vines and many more coming into Sanlucar. We parked in what both our guidebooks said was the town aire - here's the view from our parking place. The "aire" is an enormous area, almost empty of parked vehicles and has a sign at the entrance indicating no parking "excepto turisto" which we took to mean that it was reserved for visitors such as ourselves!

We took a walk around - the streets surrounding the "aire" were crammed with motorhomes and campervans parked nose to tail!

We got our bikes out and took a ride along the sea front. Like Ronda you can go for rides in a horse and cart round here.

There is a ferry here which goes across to the Donana National Park on the other side of the estuary. There are also numerous eateries round the area of the ferry which were very busy at lunchtime.

When we got back to the "aire" we got chatting to a couple of British vanners from Portsmouth. During the course of our discussions the local police turned up and explained that the "aire" was closed and that we ought to go and park in in the street or down on the beach. I queried the no parking "excepto turisto"  sign with them. They explained that a "turisto" is a car not a visitor!! Anyway we and the Portsmouth vanners moved down to the beach. Here we are having a discussion about all this.

There was lots going on down at the beach including powered para glider flights. Some Spanish vanners turned up and got their van stuck in some soft sand. The man from Portsmouth managed to dig them out and they retreated further up the beach.

There are quite a lot of what I take to be small fishing boats here but I didn't see any catches landed. I forgot to mention that just as Jerez is the centre of Spanish Sherry and Brandy production, Sanlucar is the centre for Manzanilla production. I also forgot to say that before arriving at the "aire" we did a supermarket shop in town and amongst other things I bought a bottle of "La Guita" Manzanilla which is supposed to be the bees knees. Actually I think that in future I'll stick to the 2 euros a bottle Manzanilla which I've had before as it tastes much the same as this expensive stuff to my untutored taste!

Today we traveled 40 miles (64 kilometres). We are at N36.77813 W6.36976