Homeward bound...

On Friday morning, I left Gibraltar bright and early. It was time to head home again. Some of my other team mates had also been away this week and in the evening I was going to be picking two up from the airport and a third from the bus stop.  My first little side trip was to the hillside village of Casares. Over this decade of living in Spain, I've often seen it on postcards or featured in lists of the prettiest "pueblos blancos," but I'd never been there before. It had felt like a long way to drive to visit a small village that I could walk round in no time.

But I made the detour last week, and it was certainly worth it. It was a pretty little village and the drive up to it was also very scenic, with unusual rock formations a little bit like those of the Torcal national park. Once I got there, I was glad that my car is so tiny, because I had to drive downhill to enter the town, on a narrow street with a sign saying, "Warning. Narrow street. Less than 2 metres in places."

It was market day, and the locals were buying their fruit and vegetables. As for me, I headed up to the castle, of course, to see the amazing views of the surrounding countryside, visit the ruins, and see the (outside of the) old Church of the Incarnation that was destroyed in the 1930s during the Spanish civil war. It was only restored in 2005 and is now the Blas Infante cultural centre. (Blas Infante, known as the father of Andalucía, was born in Casares. He too was killed by the dictator Franco's forces in the 1930s, at the start of the civil war.)

Looking at a map, I saw what appeared to be another "wild swimming" location on the drive back down towards the coast. Read on in the post below to discover the surprise that lay in store for me.