Motorhome & Caravan holiday Blog

We decided to have a bit of a lie in and a lazy morning as we were still aching from all the walking of yesterday but Mike and Sue wanted to do some more sightseeing and so they caught an early bus into Seville. We took a later bus and agreed to meet them at the restaurant for lunch at 3pm. We tried to find a cab to take us from the bus stop to the restaurant but every one that we saw already had fares and so we had to walk, we still arrived on time though. The girls had chosen the restaurant, it was an excellent choice, we all had something different but all courses were excellent.

After a lazy late lunch we had a short walk around the area and had a couple of afternoon liquid refreshments whilst we waited for the Flamenco show to start. We returned to Casa de la Guitarra just before 7.30pm for the show. It is a small intimate location for about 60 or so visitors with a small stage for a guitarist, singer and dancer. Due to the lighting and the inability to use flash the photos all have a red caste but give some impression of the show. After the show we took a slow walk back to the bus stop and took the last bus of the day back to the campsite. Again the bus dropped us off right outside the campsite even though it took the long route back.

We packed up and left by 9.45am and negotiated our way through the morning traffic in Cordoba. With all the traffic lights and one-way systems, it took us over 15 minutes to reach the A4 motorway. We headed east towards Seville and stopped at the first services to fill up with fuel, €100 poorer we continued on our way and saw some stork’s nests on electricity pylons and a couple of storks roosting on the street lights. The road surface on this section of the A4 was better in some places than the routes from Santa Elena to Cordoba but in some places, it was equally as bad.

Alongside the motorway for the first section of the route we were passing through more olive groves and these gave way to open green fields with some solar farm areas. We routed around the Seville ring road which was pretty busy to Dos Hermanas just to the south of the city and on to Camping Villsom, arriving at just before 12noon. The road outside the campsite is being re-routed and was marked as closed but as the campsite was only 50m past the road closed sign I took a chance the road closure was immediately after the campsite entrance. We checked in and the first pitch we were shown was too small and the front half of the van was still in the road. We were then moved to a large pitch opposite which was excellent.

We decided on a quiet day today after all the walking and sightseeing of yesterday. We had lunch under the trees and then Mike and I took a ride on our bikes to the local shops to buy some food for dinner as the campsite restaurant was closed for today. I rang the local caravan repair firm to see if they could come and look at the awning but they don’t have anything to do with Fiamma awnings unfortunately.

Today’s route

We woke to heavy mist in the campsite, whilst picturesque not ideal for travelling. Luckily by 9.30 it had started to burn off and we left just before 10 o’clock. Today’s journey was due to be around 140 kms from Santa Elena to Cordoba straight along the A4. This was a different journey today as the road was more undulating and had many long curves and fairly sharp bends but what made the journey worse was the poor road surface. This was very rough with many repaired pot holes in the nearside lane, this is probably the roughest most worn out road surface I have ever experienced in Spain. I suspect that this is due to the large number of lorries using the road. The grape vines of yesterday gave way to large Olive groves today.

We arrived on the outskirts of Cordoba about 80 minutes after leaving Santa Elena and found some large multi lane roads that wound through a busy town with lots of sets of traffic lights. The sat nav was flawless and led us through the town to the Municipal Campsite El Brillante where we checked in. This is one of the most expensive campsites we have ever stayed in at €27 a night plus an additional €5.50 per night for electricity. We were assigned plot 90 which was at the far end of the campsite over a narrow bridge with a width of about 2.5m when the motorhome is 2.32m wide it needed some accurate driving. Immediately behind our pitch was a wall and the other side of the wall was a school playground, which made it a little noisy when the children were out playing. We set up and had lunch.

After lunch we took a cab into the old town and paid a visit to the Mesquita which lived up to expectations. It is a fabulous huge old Muslim Mosque with a Roman Catholic Cathedral created in the centre of it. Entrance was €10 but it was worth it, words cannot do it justice, it is a ‘must visit’ place in my view I took a large number of photographs of the inside and a few of the outside which are here. We left the Mesquita and found a bar for a cold drink and then walked alongside the river to the old Roman bridge and as a light rain started to fall we took a cab back to the campsite stopping at Carrefour on the way for some supplies. During late afternoon and evening there were brief very light rain showers. We then settled down for the night, more sightseeing in Cordoba tomorrow.