A Cycle round the edge of Cadiz.
Cycling the Edge of Cadiz
Having done almost what I thought was half my total distance in the first two days - I'd always
planned Cadiz as a rest day and a chance to be a normal city tourist. For any cycling holiday, at least every third day being a rest day is something i'd recommend. For a stopover it ended up a pretty eventful in terms of sightseeing and I might have ended up touching about 12km over the course of the day looking around.
Cadiz is a stunning city in many ways. Surrounded by sea on all sides, an outpost, the west edge of southern Spain, which it is connected to by three thin limbs, two of them man made. There is clearly work to be had in the shipyards. The old town is hypnotically ancient, with streets wide enough for just a few people at points. Small delivery vehicles navigate these parts of of the old town, but otherwise they are largely pedestrian areas where on street eating is a huge part of the culture. Everything is four or five stories high at least and the rooftops are a world of their own. It's Semana Santa - Spain's easter holy week, more about Semana Santa later.
My second day in Cadiz I decided to circle the city by bike to get as much of it in as possible. I recommend this, for a small rock of land, there is an awful lot to see by just looping the perimeter.
I start by striking out to the most obvious. Castillo San Sebastian, the absolute extremity of the island. It is connected to the city by an otherworldly cobbled walkway. You can probably go in and learn something by opted to to just enjoy the walk to it.
From here I head back and north. Energetic dance music breezes in from the beaches, people are playing soccer and volleyball. The city has all the hallmarks of some kind of eternal summer.
From the North point of Cadiz - Boats, and lots of them! Cadiz has a ship building industry as well as being a more than idyllic place to stop on cruise.
Not long after the beaches, it becomes greener as some kind of seaside nature park surrounds a museum. Its wonderfully planted and boasts the kind of ceramic work you'll find around lot of the well developed centre's of Spain. There are some amazing trees and somewhere in my memory I think there was a statue of a particular botanist who put this all together.
To be honest, Cadiz is kind of exhaustingly pretty. All the pictures here so far were taken within about 2 hours of wheeling my bike along the coast. I could have sat in any of these places for hours just soaking up the ambience but I think the mentality that a self guided cycling trip imposes is hard to shake, so instead I incessantly pushed on around the city. It's called park Genoves and definitely worth setting aside about two hours of your time in Cadiz for.
From here the walkway continues, it's well developed though surprisingly quite once I've passed the parks. There are breaks in what is served by bike, I carry the bike up maybe 25 steps at times which seems easier with just a water bottle and camera in the panniers. There are canons pointing north, and under this defensive structure I'm fascinated by the old archways which have fallen out of use. This street at some time must have been at no so long ago, the go-to place for the young Spaniard who'd half wrecked their two stroke motorbike rumbling round the cobbled old streets of Cadiz, no doubt looking deeply stylish while doing it. Only at the end of the structure is the largest arch still in use, i'm not to sure as what but it looked pretty civilized.
The scenic, beguiling coast of Cadiz begins to fade as we approach the port area. It's still well served as a cycle route and not too tricky to just bluff my way around without really checking in on maps too often. A statue, the form of a woman looking out to the Sea is the last marker before I reach the modern port of Cadiz, and idyllic seascapes give way to acres of concrete and towering cranes. The boat building facility is visible from the city walls. I don't brave the concrete strip which leads to the lighthouse, but there is a trickle stream of fishermen making their way out to fish from the irregular concrete blocks which make up the sea defense on this side of Cadiz.
From the high walls on the port side of the city I make my way back to the west side of Cadiz - while i've been at the port, the endless summer had drifted happily along without me, with young men playing soccer in the museum grounds and people lining the picture perfect beaches in the evening sun.
Overall, Cadiz is a stupidly nice place, I passed a on a number of museums over the course of the 48 hours and suspect 5 days might been a more realistic amount of time to do the full Cadiz welcome package. The streets fill at night and there are plenty of spots to spend an evening in. It's fine by bike or by foot and deserves a slow pace to be fully absorbed. Shortly after the above picture, I dropped my camera on the cobbled street, so lets pretend the above shot was the last act of a ten year old camera. I realize now the priority is probably to find a replacement for the rest of the trip, and the Cadiz stopover ascends into spending a great evening with some friends on a rooftop with the finest of local cuisine and a few drinks. Another few day's here and i'd be selling up my stuff and probably gunning for some kind of early retirement, but there's a few more stops I want to see, so Its back to being a cyclist for the meantime at least.
Comments
Post a Comment