In Conil de La Frontera Day 1

20.01.2025 - 20.01.2025 15 °C

It was a gray rainy day in Conil as forecasted but not cold as you can see, so after a nice quiet night, we headed out to explore the town. It was the first rainy day we have had and we were glad not to be biking. Neither of us were feeling 100% - I feared I was getting Jim’s bug - and we felt we had made the right decision to stay put for 3 nights in comfortable accommodation.

As we walked across a square in front of the Church of Santa Catalina, a woman came rushing up to me and said “Please hurry! We are filming.” So I hurried and almost immediately fell on the very slick smooth paving stones - it was like being on ice! I landed on one hip and my previously broken wrist and sort of twisted my other leg. It all hurt but I managed to hobble away, feeling quite worried that I might have done some damage. However, I was soon able to walk normally but still still wondered how biking would be. I was once again glad I would have some time to recover. But all is fine now. Site of my mishap!

There was a banner in the square with wording that translates to: “La Caleta does not give up. No to eviction.”, perhaps referring to a planned development of that neighbourhood.

We wandered down up and down Conil’s streets and could see how many bars, cafes and restaurants that would cater to high season tourists were closed. There is a local population of about 22,000 that expands to 90,000 in the summer! Hard to imagine. It is one of the White Towns of Andalusia in the province of Cadiz. Wikipedia says it is mostly a vacation town as we surmised, as it has 6 beaches. Most of the tourists are Spanish with some German. There was lots of high end villa development on the outskirts of the town that we saw when we left.

Conil was an important port during Roman and Visigothic times and there are some remnants of city walls, watchtowers from the 16 and 17th C and the Torre de Guzman, the remaining part of the old 14th and 15th C castle.

We enjoyed some the ordinary town sites - some courtyard gardens, one of the thickest trucks of bougainvillea I have ever seen, other tropical plants and ordinary buildings as well as the view out to the agricultural land..

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