The Road from Santiago

We are following the old railroad to Baul.  It is very small. Even Spanish wiki can not find much to say other than 137 people live there now. 157 people used to live them.  We won’t go into the town but it has some splendid roads there.  The Plaza de Andalucia, Calle Flores and Calle Explanada de la Estación. To be honest, I feel you need a certain population for a plaza. First though, we are going to the rail station.  It was a small affair. For 1970s Hornby railway fans it would count as maybe ‘a wayside halt’.  It was in decline but has been done up. Daniel gave it four stars and these wise words.  ‘ A small, typical railway station on the Baza-Guadix line with a water loading bay for steam locomotives. It is currently being restored to its former glory. Along with the large Baúl Bridge, it makes for a very attractive destination. Recommended for nostalgic railway enthusiasts or railway enthusiasts.’ While the station only gets 5 reviews, the bridge nea...

Welcome to March. Also welcome to a day without a house, shack or wideside cafe. We begin the day, alongside the main road. Google will have us scrambling up the embankment, nipping over the barrier and so across the way and out among the olive trees. Today is the Dia de les Illes Balears. This day was picked because on 1st March 1983 the Statue of Autonomy was published. It became a non-working day in 1999. I’m sure they are up to larks over the sea. It is Saint David’s day. Last year the Welsh migrant community came together at the Plaza de la Mezquita in Benalmadena to, to quote Euroweekly, ‘to eat and drink Welsh cuisine, sing, dance, and celebrate the ex-pat Welsh community’. This is what I have found out about St David in Spain. The websearch answering to the call did offer me a fair bit of St David’s as a Pilgrim Route; the Camino de Santiago and ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’. Hum Ho. Not much going on. Not a lot to look at. Alright, some saints. The two earliest Iberian...

  We have barely moved into Baza then we are on the way out and into one of those routes which is the only way between two lumps of inconveniently placed geology.  But first, a few steps back and nip round the Antigua Estacion Ferrocarril.  The railway reached Baza in 1894 when a line from Lorca arrived.  This was so popular that a second line, linking Baza and den of inquiry, the bishopric stealing city of Guadix, in 1907 - built by the British Great South of Spain Railway Company.  This event was so important it would lead to the station having a wiki page all to itself.  Eight tracks ran into Baza. The station has two platforms which kept going for 90 years. In 1985 the line was closed as it had become very unprofitable. The station building now stands before a big area which appears to be used for fairs and flea markets.   Clare said of it ‘A disused but fine example of an old rural town station in Spain complete with rurntable’  Tomas was mor...

  We are heading into Baza. In 2003 21,000 people lived here. It is a dead diocese.  I have a slight problem with the term ‘Reconquest.’ It sort of suggests that the Islamic Invasion of Spain was just that, an Invasion.  A couple of years later the plucky chaps from Asturias have nipped down, everyone is RC again and all the better for it. Even if you ignore the fact that these parts of the world had had a different religion for 700 years.  700 years ago Edward II was trying to patch up his relationship with his misses and the damn weather was the thing that people worried about killing large percentages of the population, not the Black Death. 700 years changes people.   I am of an age when I am getting memes saying how good the olde dayes were - playing out, games of conkers, much higher rates of violence death on the road and comedians wondering if they’ve been cancelled or just the taste of things has moved on. I suppose, with music, it is more instant a...