Leaving Spain...and entering Portugal. Time to head west and into new territory - Portugal. The dry countryside to the border is fairly sparsely populated with few villages or towns and with much larger farms than we had seen to date. The roads had few cars and even on the smaller roads it was easy driving. In the distance not far from a tiny village called Sanlúcar la Mayor we saw two huge towers that seemed to have an incredibly bright light ema...

Sevilla Just outside Sevilla at a little place called Santiponce is Itálica, the remains of an old Roman city. Over the centuries much of it was raided to build other towns and cities and so it consists mostly of foundations spread out over a very large and dusty site. The site is slowly being excavated and parts of it rebuilt ('restored') but the only major structure of note is the amphitheatre. This is pretty impressive and, while you can't go up into t...

Cádiz We moved on from Córdoba for the most part because it was a Monday and just about everything is closed there on a Monday. No sense in hanging around! We travelled through the usual mix of flat or undulating plains of farmland (only this time cotton crops were a new addition to the view) or of the much more interesting mountain regions. Russ gets to see less of the latter as the concentration level required to stay on the narrow winding roads and...

Córdoba. From Ronda to Córdoba, it seems that every square centimetre of farming land is devoted to olive production. As far as the eye can see, over hills and across plains, rows and rows of every age tree from hundred year old gnarled oldies to newly planted saplings give the landscape a dotted look. The ground beneath is usually starkly white and contrasts with the deep grey green foliage above. In this area, there aren't even many villages. We have...

Costa del Sol And so a look at probably the most famous coastal region in Spain. Who has not heard of Malaga and Marbella and Torremolinas , haunts of the package deal devotees of northern Europe? Our drive back to the coast took us through mountainous regions ...yet again - there are a lot of mountains in Spain! We drove over the dam wall of a large reservoir. The lower side had one of the oldest and smallest hydro power stations around, while the out...