We were in Sanlúcar de Barrameda for a month over Easter & my brother & sister-in-law joined us for the first week. Of course we headed into town for the festival parades &, after a Winter out-of-season, enjoyed the buzz of people on holiday enjoying themselves.
Sanlúcar had a lot to offer, but we actually preferred nearby Chipiona & often setoff in the car with the dogs in the back to walk them on the extensive beaches just out of town.
It’s strange how we warmed to a particular town or not & couldn’t really pinpoint why. We loved Galicia & our nearby town of Sarria, but then didn’t feel at all comfortable in Marco de Canaveses in Northern Portugal. This was strange as we’d travelled in central Portugal a number of times & loved it! Moving on from Sanlúcar, we really enjoyed Conil de la Frontera for our next home base & would definitely return there.
The beaches in Southern Western Spain are wonderful with the advantage of lots of out-of-town areas where dogs were allowed.
One evening drive along the coast brought us to the Trafalgar lighthouse peninsular & the Ohana beach bar with music playing. We do love these unplanned & unexpected surprises & stayed a while, though neither of us were dressed for dusk & did feel cool & were bitten by mozzies. Max is very much a people-dog & will make friends with anyone for a fuss so spent all his time with another couple who thought he was really cute. Roxy has taken to travelling very well considering how nervous she’d been & happily settled down under tables in the various bars we frequented.
Sanlúcar is famous for it’s annual beach horse-race & there were horses everywhere, being ridden down the roads, exercising on the beaches, grazing on waste land & even in the back garden of a house opposite.
We did know that Spain has many street or stray dogs & they are not neccessarily well-looked after. However, after Portugal where emaciated, matted-haired dogs are frequently chained up, we did notice more pet dogs being walked on leads on the Spanish streets. A refreshing change for us being dog lovers, well, we’re lovers of all animals in general.
We made the most of our time in Eastern Andalucia, visiting historical Cadiz & beautiful Seville. Whist Ronda was just over an hour’s drive away, we’d be within easy striking distance from our next home near Malaga, so saved that visit until later. However, we were thwarted by the car battery draining & being unable to start the engine on occasion. We will seriously be looking for a new used car when we move to Malaga in the hope that more dealers will be able to speak English in this expat-land.