Everything is fine, parking is free

We are heading into La Zaida.  It is one of those villages which seems to be all new and built along the road, but is probably a mask on an older pueblo. Which, given the origin of the village’s name in Arabic, is probably the case.  Unlike other places along here its 432 souls are the remnant of almost double that number when the place peaked in 1981. Its fiestas are on 5th February [Saint Agatha], 16th August [Saint Roch] and Saint Barbaras, in December.



The place has a website however it will not open for me. The town, however, is.  We will pass Santa Barbara’s church and on to the Bar Merendero. It opens, very specifically, at 6.40am weekdays, 7am on the weekend.  It closes 5pm Monday to Thursday; 3.30 Friday, midnight Saturday and 7pm sunday.  .Two months ago Quim noted ‘We went there on Saturday for dinner, they said they didn't do it.’  Eight months ago RC reckoned ‘It is a roadside bar, but you can eat homemade food and the service is good. There is nothing else nearby so in this town it is one of the few places where you can eat.’  Nine months ago Teresa proclaimed ‘Spectacular, abundant and very delicious food, family treatment. They didn't give us food anywhere in the surrounding area, until we showed up here. We were delighted. 100% recommended.’





We won’t go to the station, it is one of those standard numbers, a long one story building, which used to bustle when all that was, was train bound. Today most of the doors are now blocked up.  The A-221 does a sudden east turn when it encounters a Chemical Works.  https://www.evonik.com/en.html Given the front page of the site it seems the chemistry has a certain hallucinatory effect.   Ten months ago a reviewer said of it ‘Everything is fine, parking is free, there is a shower, but the hours are 7 to 17 At the checkpoint, go to the office, hand over your documents, they give you a plastic card for travel, go to the parking lot, wait, then the car driver drives up to you, drive to the unloading point, unload, go to the parking lot, go to the office, give your card, pick up your documents, free 😄 P.S. unloaded plastic barrels, they slide easily on the floor, no need to open the awning, brought them to the back doors manually’





Another said ‘I brought empty plastic containers. The load is not heavy. The pallet weighs approximately 50 kg. There is a ramp. It is prohibited to unload through the ramp, it is prohibited to use hand-held devices of various types, and the loaders are not equipped with long forks. But forcing a driver to do double work under the scorching Spanish sun is not prohibited. In order to unload, they forced me to open the car on both sides. Every driver knows what unloading on the right side is. There are twice as many crossbars, there are belts and ratchets hanging for them. It takes twice as much effort, time, and a resource called man-hours. Unloading takes longer. Three stars because there is a shower for drivers.’





That’s it. Lets head out of town.







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