19th February 2017. Ronda, Spain.

Today we decided it was time to move on to Ronda, it was touch and go as to whether we would change our minds but in the end we forced ourselves to leave Seville.

We didn’t get very far before the first incident occurred, Darren had been into the car park attendant’s hut and come out with the ticket he needed to use to raise the barrier however the barrier would not go up.  I didn’t realise this was going on until suddenly a smiley man (I think Matt Le Blanc might be moonlighting) walked up to the van and gestured to the barrier he then mimed for Darren to get back in the van and realign it, he wasn’t quite on the sensors, after a lot of backwards and forwards manoeuvres the barrier finally lifted!  It didn’t phase the man at all he was still just as cheerful and waved to us as we drove through.

As we left Seville we drove past the park where there were hundreds of people running on the opposite side of the road, further along we saw a sign for the Seville marathon.  We were thankful that we weren’t going that way although we were sent on a small detour.  We’d been sitting at the traffic lights watching the runners and we noticed that the road we needed to take was blocked off by police cars however the car in front of us was certain he could still go down there until he was waved on by the police, that was quite entertaining.

We drove to Ronda which is a couple of hours away from Seville and once again the landscape we drove through changed quite quickly and quite dramatically.  It was beautiful, lots of rolling hills covered with lush bright green grass interspersed with fields of rich brown soil, we passed by a huge lake of glacial green water and then the landscape became dotted with rock which eventually led to mountainous terrain.

In the modern part of Ronda we parked in a car park that Kathryn had told us about and chilled out as on and off the rain poured down on the van.

As the rain stopped falling and the sun began to set we finally put our coats on to go and look over the wall that ran along beside the car park where we’d parked.  OMG!  We’d been sitting 20 metres away from a FANTASTIC view!  The drive up had had such a gentle incline that we weren’t aware of quite how high up we were and looking over the wall we were unexpectedly looking down over the valley.  We could see small roads snaking off into the distance and hear a couple of dogs barking to each other.  It was quite chilly (I had two coats on) and yet there were trees dotted around the area covered with pink or white blossom. As the sun disappeared lights appeared one at a time twinkling in the houses down below.  What a lovely way to end the day.