August 16th Elche

John is better than he was yesterday, I’m very glad to say. I went with Jen to see him this evening, and he’d got his colour back, and was talking a lot more easily. He’s still being kept in the hospital for observation, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him home tomorrow, or possibly Saturday.

I offered to go to the hospital with Jen this morning, but she didn’t want me to, so I thought that under the circumstances the best thing I could do was to carry on just as I would have done in other circumstances. I didn’t fancy a long excursion today though, so set my modest sights on Elx/Elche. That dual name business is easily explained – Elx is the name in Valencian. I’m not going to upset any of the my friends in the area by getting involved in the discussion of whether Valencian is a dialect of Catalan or not.

The first time I ever heard of Elx/Elche was actually 11 years ago, which was when Jen and John bought their first home in the Alicante area. When you drive away from airport on the motorway past Elx/Elche you pass a large brown (cultural, same as in the UK) sign with a face wearing a curious headdress and the words – Elche – Patrimonio De La Humanidad. Which intrigued me, and which I’ve since learned means that Elx/Elche is a World Heritage City. This has as much to do with the huge palm groves, of which the city is very proud, as anything else. However it does have quite a lot else going for it.

Once again I took the Smart Car to the station, and then the Cercania train towards Alicante. It was only three stops, and the price of 2 Euros 80 was an absolute steal in my opinion. Mind you, there was a certain amount of frustration as I was waiting to buy my ticket at the machine. The couple in front of me just couldn’t work it. What made it somewhat worse was the fact that as their frustration level was rising, they began to curse the machine in the native tones of my own home town. I helped sort them out, anyway, and we all of us made it onto the platform in time.

So, Elx/Elche, then. Getting from the train station to the centre of the older part of the town involved crossing the Rio Vinalopo. In August, crossing a river in a large town or city in Spain is an interesting experience. Usually there’s a vertiginous drop from the bridge to the surface of a tiny little stream or trickle which runs underneath. I would imagine that it’s a different story in the winter. The tourist office was just a couple of hundred yards from the bridge. Normally I like tourist offices. They give you helpful maps, and all they ask is that you tell them your nationality for their statistics. Not this one. I asked for a map, and the lady put it on the counter, and then insisted on making her own personal recommendations, circling them on the map for me, recommending hotel accommodation, launching on 5 minute monologue about the delights of the land train sightseeing tour, and finally giving me a blow by blow account of the Misterio de Elche, or the Elche Mystery Play. Now, don’t get me wrong, UNESCO has declared this a Masterpiece of the oral heritage of Humanity. But it is performed on the 14th and 15th August. Today is the 16th. The words stable, door, horse and bolted did come irresistibly to mind.

Finally she momentarily let go of the map, and I grabbed it, said bye, and got while the going was possible. Across the road and round the corner was the magnificent Basilica de Santa Maria. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the Cathedral in Murcia, it was beset by pretty much the same problem , namely that it’s hemmed in by other buildings making it extremely difficult to find an angle where you could comfortably attempt to make a sketch of it. I did manage to sketch part of the back of it, but didn’t find any suitable angle to sketch the main dome and the tower until later in the day.

Funnily enough, it was in my next port of call that I actually found that angle. When you cross the bridge, at the old town end you’re struck by quite a striking castle tower, and on the remains of the castle the MAHE – Elx/Elche Museum of Archaeology and History has been built. When it comes to History, Elx/lche certainly has a lot of it. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines and Moors have all left their mark. However that wasn’t the most interesting thing for me. No, the most interesting thing was that it answered the 11 year old question of who or what the strange head on that brown motorway sign was. The lady in question, for a lady it is, is La Dama De Elche – the Lady of Elche. It’s a very well preserved bust of a woman – maybe a goddess – wearing ceremonial headdress and robes, probably dating from the 4th century BC. It’s a striking piece of work, albeit that the strange headdress has probably made other people than just me nickname it Princess Leia’s granny. The museum hosts a couple of replicas. The original, incidentally is housed in the National Arhcaeological Museum in Madrid, which I visited last week. I cannot, in all honesty, say that I noticed the Dama in there thought.

I could in all honesty have stayed a bit longer. However, you remember that I mentioned there was rain yesterday? Well, after I came out of MAHE a huge, filthy, angry looking grey cloud covered the whole town. All I had with me in the way of wet weather gear was my sun cap. Jen did mention yesterday that on the rare occasions that they get summer rain like yesterday, it does tend to happen across three days. When it clouds over like it did, it means one of two things. A) It is going to rumble and make all the noise of a thunderstorm, but not do much else. B) You are going to get drenched very, very quickly and very, very thoroughly. So, to cut a long story short, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and headed back to the station.

Well, that’s today’s sketching expedition. The rain followed me back to San Isidro, and I’m not unhappy that I came back when I did. We nipped over to the hospital to see John, and as I said, he seemed a lot better. And if that’s not a positive note on which to end for now, then I don’t know what is.