The Road from Santiago

  Another day and across the motorway and on to the Restaurante Venta Quemada. It has 14648 reviews - better than many a cathedral.   http://www.restauranteventaquemada.es/   The top words are ember, embutido, autovia. Peak hours, fly, agneau, personal foul and rabbit meat.   55 minutes ago chiqui gave four stars, said they had lunch with no wait and they experienced ‘moderate noise.’  The devil is in the detail.  Are we talking British moderate noise or Spanish moderate noise.  Maybe Cristy will qualify this.  Five hours ago Cristy gave five stars and said ‘The food was excellent. The atmosphere was a bit noisy, but that's normal. The service was very fast.’ Well here we go.  Nothing else reviewed to look at so its time we talked about…. the origins of the name Andalusia.  Well, why not. You will not be surprised that the origin of the name is somewhat debated - come on, you know academics, of course it is.  It appears it was ...

  Today went terribly wrong. I sometimes do the googleplonk and plan the next few weeks ahead to get a sense of where I’m going. I think drink had been taken as I appear to be doing an awful lot of kilometres today and it doesn’t all quite match up.  I will need to walk a lot today, ensure I keep the phone with me to add the odd metres when stumbling round the house and bank some in the days ahead. We are walking along the road in either April 2011 or March 2025, basically following the farmers road alongside the motorway.    We won’t be turning off, down to El Contador, which is a shame as they have one of these old, communal washing areas, the Lavadero Publico. It is a true three stars. Good in itself, worth seeing but not worth going to see.  Darwader sums it up ‘ Small covered enclosure with two rows of adjacent pillars. Traditional construction. Currently closed to prevent vandalism.’ Along we go to Las Vertientes. Again, we are approaching peak rural Spain...

  Spain has so many roads like this. Once the trucks of commerce competed for road space with the considerably fewer cars of casual motoring and petrol stations, wayside inns and convenient petrol stations. No more.  The A-92N came and took away their lifeblood.  Some parts get reinvented, some dwindle.  We are going to pass a few remnants on our way into Chirivel.  The restaurant San Luis is permanently closed.  It has three reviews. Two were from 7 years ago, one from five.  Altogether they gave an average of 3.7 stars and said two words ‘Unknown zone…’ Chirivel lived on the road and now has spread a little either side.  About 1500 live in the wider municipality.   We haven’t done this for a while but demographically it rose from 2350 in 1860, rose gently tp 3650 in 1950 and then went into a slightly sharper decline.  The place has been a PSOE strong-hold, having fallen to the PP only between 1995-1999. The present mayor is Jose Torreg...