Mark
Mark Bradford was born in Australia in 1966 and has lived on a damp, cold island off the coast of France since 1970. Educated in the State School System (proudly), his teachers unanimously agreed he had raised indolence and mediocrity to world-class levels.
In sport, he excelled at outrunning the bigger kids to avoid a regular hiding. These traits have seen him through several aimless career changes and now, in his 50s, he finds himself wondering what he will do when he grows up.
But, he loves his family and he can cook a bit.
Follow him at www.bradfordfamilycookbook.uk
That’s more like it
I briefly visited Oliva on the way from Torrevieja to Torrent and wasn’t that enamoured, the next town is Gandia and it seemed nicer somehow. So rather than plan to drive straight back from Torrent to Frigiliana, I decided to go to Gandia for a couple of nights.
My kind of town, Valencia is
Valencia is a large conurbation with several suburbs which are in fact separate towns. They’re broadly thought of as suburbs is the metro goes there. I chose Torrent at random, sort of.
I read this post on mappingspain.com about a couple who moved from Almenucar (which I visited on the first leg of this trip and didn’t really like) to Torrent and they were happy so I chose there.
The Bognor Blanca
The picture doesn't do the sunset justice
My planning was pretty rubbish. A direct route on the Motorway from Frigiliana to Valencia is about six hours. Yesterday I took about three to get to Almeria (90 minutes on the motorway). Today I really underestimated driving from there to Torrevieja along the coast road. It took about an hour just to get through Alicante.
I am standing in front of an orchestra blowing a kazoo because I think they need the help.
This is a multi-part blog of a week travelling up the east coast of Spain to Valencia (or Balencia; it’s complicated). Part one was to avoid the motorway completely and drive on the coast road from Frigiliana to Almeria.
In my hilarious little car. Brilliant!
Bloody cheek! That’s not a castle!
There was a Roman fort, then a Moorish castle above Frigiliana. Or so they say. There’s not much evidence. There are, however, breathtkaing views of this beautiful place.
Nowhere near as flashy/pious as Pinto
My walk to La Cruz de Pinto was lovely, even if I do still have small pieces of the forest stuck in my hand.
Tomayto-Tomarto
I’ve written about Sofrito before, but I didn’t realise that both the Italians and Spanish use the same word. Well, actually I did know that, but didn’t realise it was for slightly different things.
Arse over apex
If you’ve seen any of my pictures of Frigiliana, many of which have been taken from my terrace, you’ll have seen a benign-looking roundish hill behind the village to the east (my left as I look out towards the sea). What you can’t see is the drop to the river gorge between the village and the hill.
Ahem, sorry about that
Having listened to this two part report from the food programme, we’ve been eating a lot more beans at home.
