Ups and Downs and Ups

The glory of Cordoba is the Cathedral Mosque (Mezquita). Once upon a time, this was the most populous city in Europe and a Moslem centre to rival Mecca. When the Moslems took the city, the Visigoth Cathedral was demolished and a fairly low building was constructed, its flat roof,obout 8 metres high, supported by rows of pillars. A series of four rulers successively extended this until the number of "bays" equalled the number of days in a year. Then the Christians re-took the city and built a section in the middle that's more like a traditional Christian cathedral, with spire etc.

This has resulted in a unique and marvellous building, with which we were very impressed and surprised that it hasn't had more publicity.

After this, we decided to head for some ruins 7.5km out of town. Having just bigged-up the satnav in my last post, it had real problems today and kept ordering us the wrong way up one-way streets and making us go in loops when we disobeyed.

To be fair :-) the map detail in Spain has been amazing, showing service roads inside campsites and shopping malls! I guess they must have really changed the roads in the last 5 years, including, it seems, building a big new bypass sunk into a trench right across the road we wanted to follow.

The 7.5km ends up more like 20km and takes well over an hour. When we get to the ruins we find they shut at 2pm on Sundays, the same time that the Cathedral Mosque re-opened after morning services. All that way for nothing.

We then set out toward Gibraltar, taking a gamble and using the new bypass. We see a nasty head-on 2-car smash where the road goes from dual-carriageway to one-lane-each-way. Significantly, a helicopter ambulance sits beside, not looking like it'll be used soon. Sarah said she drove more warily after seeing that.

After much flicking between Rough Guide guidebook and map, I find a campsite described about 30 minutes short of Gibraltar. I swear we did five laps of a couple of kilometres of dual carriageway, including many surrounding roads. Eventually the truth becomes clear: they built all over the campsites a year or so ago and now, even if we go back up the coast, there's nothing we can get to before 11pm, the presumed closing time.

We give up on camping and try to reach a hotel we've seen roadside hoardings for. Even that doesn't turn out as simple as it should. Nevertheless, they do have spaces and we're in by midnight. It turns out that the Suites Duquesa Golf is lovely and not too expensive. During a fruitless search for a bar open after Sunday midnight onvthe advice of reception, we decide to stay two nights and take it easy tomorrow.

So that's an up to finish off a day with an up at the start but a couple of downs in the middle. Not too bad overall.

A final word for the Rough Guide guidebook to Spain. We hate it. Apart from the campsite near San Sebastian, it has let us down at every turn and most placename spellings don't seem to match the roadsigns. Sarah only bought it because the shop didn't have the Lonely Planet guide. Maybe another shop?