The Road from Santiago

  We are crossing into Cadiz, and most of the day we will spend on the east / land side of the cause way, with its railway and busy road we are a bit trapped.  This will mean we can not scamper across to see the remnant of the Roman aqueduct.  Now, I will admit these are not the Pont du Gard but the fact the Romans took the effort and that any of it survives is of note. Michal gave it one star and ‘Nothing special’.  Mind you fabocs five stars are over egging the pudding a bit. There is a restaurant half way across - that we can’t get to.  Ventorrillo El Echato has 2759 reviews and must be fun to be in when a storm rolls in off the Atlantic.  The gaff is an 18th Century Post House with almost 2800 reviews.  https://www.ventorrilloelchato.com/   Two hours ago Mica said of it ‘ Amazing place, staff, and food!!! Words can't describe it!! You have to come and experience it for yourself!! A truly unique restaurant…’ Back to Cadiz, Being a useful Atlant...

  San Fernando is ahead of us.  It is for 97,500 people living here, rather than in Cadiz. It has water around an awful look of it and so the locals call it La Isla.  The are known as " Cañaíllas " or " Isleños ".  The English wiki doesn’t say a lot other than the proud boast that it was never occupied by the French, during the Napoleonic Wars and it was here the Cortes of Cadiz drew up a liberal constitution -  which the restored Bourbons trashed. The Spanish Wiki page is a bit more about the place. It mentions the important of fish salting. The Romans built pottery. The Catholic Monarchs built a Royal Shipyard.  The Military liked the place. The Royal Institute and Observatory of the Navy and the Pantheon of Illustrious Mariners are present. As is the Teatro de las Cortes - where they did the constitutional thing.  Spain’s loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines meant less ships were needed and with it the closure of the shipyards. At the same ...

  I have, sometime in the previous 1000 posts, mused on the nature of preconceptions being the spam of the mind. Thing is the universe is large and the brain capacity is small and while one is wondering if Sarah Biddulph did kidnap a mad woman in 1776 you don’t have space to know about every city in the world - and Cadiz, pronounced Cardiff - is one of them. My knowledge of Cadiz is that Elizabethans got tetchy with the place and that it held out against Napoleon and his ilk. In a wonderfully constructed board game called War & Peace the French tended to sweep all before them, leaving Cadiz and the like holding out. The French slowly have to strip garrisons to defend supply lines until it gets critical and they have to abandon land to make field armies. What I didn’t realise was that Cadiz really is stuck out on a limb and that it has a bit of reputation for being relaxed and liberal. I have included a satellite picture today so you get the idea that we are walking alongside a ...