Summer 2019 episode 9 - 31st July - Murcia

Okay, so when I left you in the previous episode, I’d just scarpered from the Testivos de Jehova. I sat myself outside the Church of San Bartolomeo, fully intending to sketch the church as an act of penance, when I noticed a rather interesting statue right in front of it. Dios Mercurio, or the God Mercury as we call him. My first thought was that the Church was rather bidding against itself by having this statue outside its entrance, but then, thinking about it, I suppose that it’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of a Marvel comics/DC crossover. By the way, if you’re looking at the sketch, that thing sticking out in front of the statue is his caduceus. Ooh, Matron. That’s his wand – ooh Matron. Honestly, get your minds out of the gutter, please. The caduceus is the staff with two serpents wound round it which has since become an international symbol for medicine and medical help. As for the strange thing seemingly sticking out of his cheek, well, this was all part of a baseball hat and scarf combination which had been hung rather haphazardly around his neck.

I had a hankering to see the Plaza del Toros, which I noticed on the map. Yes, that’s right, a bullring. Now, let me try to explain my feelings about this. I have never been to a bull fight, and I never want to go to a bullfight. I understand that bull fighting is part of Spanish culture and tradition, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it or condone it, because I don’t. But architecturally, I wanted to see the building – well, the outside at least. For me, a Spanish bullring is the closest modern descendant of a roman amphitheatre, both architecturally, and also in terms of the bloodthirsty spectacle provided. So I did walk along to it, and in terms of architecture, I can’t say that I was disappointed. It wasn’t easy to get a good vantage point to sketch it, and this was a standing up job.

I walked back towards the cathedral, and found a useful low stone wall to sit on while I sketched the bell tower, which you can see on the same page as the sketch of Mercury. Time was getting on by now, and a spot of lunch seemed to be in order. Cards on the table, food never forms an important part of my agenda whenever I’m on a sketching trip, and especially when the weather’s hot as it is here, then it tends to suppress my appetite. However, you do have to eat, and in this case I walked back down the Gran Via towards the bridge, then took a detour towards what I think was the Church of San Pedro, and this was surrounded by restaurants, as you can hopefully see from the sketch I made. I had a very nice slice of pizza with cheese and chorizo, and thus fortified, I headed back towards the river.

It was while I was walking towards an interesting Iron girder bridge that I noticed that something was sticking out of the river. Something huge. A closer look revealed that it is in fact a sculpture, of the head of a fish, and its tail sticking out of the river. I have to say that I rather liked the frivolity of it. I idly googled it when I got back to the casa last night, and found out that it is the Sardina del Segura – the Segura being the river – and it’s a tribute to the most famous ancient fiesta of the city, the Enttierro de la Sardina. It’s held every spring, and the literal meaning of Entierro del Sardina is the burial of the Sardine. And you thought my putative Fiesta del Propane sounded silly! I’m not making this one up. Apparently it is a mock funeral procession which ends with a symbolic burning of an effigy of a sardine to mark Ash Wednesday, the end of carnival and the start of Lent.

Well, I thought, how do you follow a giant, concrete sardine sticking out of the middle of the river? I’ll be honest, I didn’t have much of an answer when I’d finished the sketch. My modus operandi for a day’s sketchpedition is to keep going until my legs hurt, and then stop. It was about 3 o’clock and my legs were hurting, so I headed to the station. Where I swiftly found out that the next train to Alicante didn’t leave until 4. Well, such is life. I wasn’t in a huge rush, which was just as well because it was more like quarter past  by the time the train left the station.

Just one more thing worthy of mention. Only two of us got off the train at San Isidro. The other guy was ahead of me, and we both walked out of the station. Then he headed off in exactly the direction I wanted to go. Every turning I needed to make, he made exactly the same turning before me. As we approached the road with the Casa Me Duck I couldn’t believe that he walked into exactly the same street. Poor devil must have thought that I was deliberately following him. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had preceded me into the gates of the casa, but thankfully he went into a house across the road, and so my brief, unwanted career as San Isidro’s own Senor Stalker came to an end.

Well, that’s it for yesterday’s Murcia trip. Not a lot happening on what has been a lazy, can’t be bothered to step outside the casa, day so far today. So I’ll see you again tomorrow.

Summer 2019 Episode 8- 31st July - Murcia

Right then, I know you’ve probably been unable to sleep for worrying about where I was going to end up going today. Well, fear not. All will be revealed. But not right this second. Firstly, though, today’s shoutout. This episode is dedicated to my grandchildren, Ollie, Mimi and Alfie. Grampy misses you loads.

So, today’s lucky winner was . . . Murcia! Yes, I could easily have gone to Alicante or Elche again, today, but in the end Murcia was the clear winner. Why? Well, you may remember that I visited Murcia last year, and it was only after I’d been that I realised I’d missed out on something while I was there. What’s that? I hear you say. (Go on then, say it.) Well, what do Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Alicante, Birmingham, Amsterdam and Stockholm all have, that Ieper, Kaunas and Madrid don’t? Yes, you’ve got it, trams. I’m not saying that you can’t have a good holiday without going on a tram, since I’ve done it several times. However the tram is usually the icing on the cake.

I set off from the Casa Me Duck at just after 9. I didn’t borrow the Smart this time, because it’s only a ten minute walk to the station. Bearing in mind how likely I am to burn, I borrowed John’s hat. Which was the cue for the sky to cloud over, and the sun to disappear, never to seriously threaten to break through until I returned back to the casa. All in all, though, it made for a very pleasant walking day. At one point the temperature was down to a bracing 25 degrees. And me without my scarf and gloves.

Unbeknownst to me, the new timetable for the Cercania line between Alicate and Murcia starts on the last day of the month rather than the first. My first clue that I could be in for a long wait was when I noticed that the Spanish for Waiting Room is Sala de Espera. From Latin and French I know that Espera is derived from the word for hope as well. Be fair, even in the 70s, British Rail never tried to get away with having a Hoping Room instead of a waiting room. Might have been a bit more honest, however, I digress. Still, at least the 50 minute wait at the station gave me the opportunity to make the first sketch of the day.

It takes slightly more than half an hour to Murcia by the train, but it’s a very pleasant journey, passing close by the mountains between Callosa de Segura and Orihuela. I was somewhat distracted by the lady who got on and plonked herself opposite me at Callosa de Segura. Judging from her somewhat homely appearance, her headscarf and her age, she might well have been called Senora Norabatti. She kept trying to engage me in conversation, despite the fact that I assured her “No hablo Espanol” at regular intervals. Actually, I say she tried to engage me in conversation, but actually no. She just wanted me to be an audience to her monologue, and didn’t seem to care in the slightest whether I could understand what she was saying. Come to think of it, I’ve taken part in Parents Evenings like that.

Having visited Murcia last year, I had a pretty good idea where to go when I left the station. Luckily the route took me over the River, then past the Cathedral, to the southernmost point of the Murcia tram network, the Plaza Circular – so named after the 19^th century dramatist Juan Pablo Circular, best known for his riotous farce, “Toreador, Don’t Spit Upon the Floor” I believe. The Plaza itself is round, which is a bit of a coincidence, too, I suppose. The tram stop just around the corner thankfully had some benches, so it wasn’t really a hardship to sit and work on the tram sketch you can see as three trams went by. Time was getting on, though, and so I did photograph the actual tram I got on, in order to help me cheat to finish the sketch later on. I’ll come back to that.

So, having ridden on a tram network that I’d never used before, the day had already become a huge success for me. So the big question was what to do for a lap of honour. Now, on the Gran Via leading off from the Plaza Circular there’s a tourist information booth. If you know me, then you know I love tourist information booths and offices, because I love free maps. The one I had from this booth had, I noticed, numbers between one and the high 40s in blue circles liberally sprinkled across it, with the majority clustered between the Plaza and the cathedral. Each of these was supposedly a place of interest. So I set off to find as many as I could. To be fair, some of them are fantastic. If you’re in the centre of Murcia, you need a church and you don’t fancy the Cathedral, well, I can guarantee that you won’t be far from another church which might be more to your taste. On the other hand, though, some of them are, well, I’m not saying they’re not worth looking at, but I did walk past them three or four times before I realised they were there. So alright, I am saying that some of them aren’t worth looking at.

I stopped briefly in the Plaza Santo Domingo, where I made one of my favourite sketches last year, and almost immediately wished that I hadn’t. I was called over by a group with a little stand with the words Testivos de Jehova. You’re probably reacting to that word Jehova the same way that I did, and you’d be right. They were in fact Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now look, I have no quarrel with and would make no criticism of any religious group or religion, and I certainly haven’t got anything better to offer anyone. But I don’t wish to discuss it in detail in public when I could be sketching. The thing is, though, my Spanish just isn’t good enough to convey all of that, so I resorted to the universal language of scarper.

I shan’t lie to you, Dearly Beloved. I’ve had a terrific day, but my head is hurting. I’ve taken some tablets, but I think it would be best if I shut this down for tonight, and then took up the story again in the morning, when I’ll also post the rest of the sketches.

See you then.

Murcia (13th August)

Hello, good evening, and welcome to another episode of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. Now, I’m sure that you’ll have been paying attention so you’ll know that today was scheduled for a trip to Murcia. I was surprised to learn that Murcia is actually Spain’s 7th largest city. It was actually founded in the 9th century by the Emir of Cordoba, and I saw a couple of traces of the city’s Islamic heritage.

So, I promised you some foolishness, I think. I made sure that I was by the station with some time to spare, so I nipped into the nearby Hiperber supermercado to buy a large bottle of water, and a smaller one. The idea was to drink the smaller one, then refill it and use it if I was going to make a painting. Clever huh? Well, actually not really. You see, I opened it on the platform a minute or two before the train was due. Now, bearing in mind it was called something like Gaseosa I did expect it to be fizzy. Not that fizzy, though. It practically exploded on opening, and the top third of the bottle showered me, just as the train was pulling into the station.

To be fair the little Cercania train to Murcia passed through some quite interesting scenery. Now, I’m a city boy, myself, and I often find scenery to be a bit like wallpaper – I don’t really notice it’s there a lot of the time. The hills, which we passed quite near to, were impressive. In fact, colour and shape wise they were kind of like I’d imagine the surface of Mars to be like.

It took about 40 minutes to get to Murcia. Now, a little bit of research beforehand had told me that I really wanted to see the old town, and that the railway station was a bit of a walk. When I had researched which bus to take me to the Royal Casino – more about that later - - it gave me two options. Well, when I asked the drivers of both,- Casino Real – they both gave me the kind of reaction they might have done if I’d asked them for a cheap day super saver return to Ulaan Baatar. So stuff it, I thought, and started to walk. I had seen the tower of the Cathedral as we’d puled into the station, so I knew the right general direction. I hoped.

No, I’m not going to try to keep you in suspense. I did get there. And the centre of Murcia is really rather impressive. First port of call was the aforementioned Casino Real. It was built in the 19th century, and is still the HQ of a private club, but in 1983 it was declared a national monument. Oh, and if the word ‘casino’ is conjuring up mental images of slot machines and roulette tables, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Open to the public are some rather grand public rooms – ballroom, a hall of mirrors, and an Italianate patio meant to conjure up images of Pompeii. After I’d taken the audio tour I was pretty much ready for a sketching break, so I walked to the Plaza San Domingo at the end of the street where the casino was located, and made the ink sketch you can see of the corner of said street.

The Casino is the most visited building in Murcia. However, probably the most impressive is the Cathedral. Again, I had the same problem with it that I’d had in Madrid – when you’re in the Plaza where you can see it’s detailed and ornate façade, you just can’t get a good sketch of it. You can’t because a) you’d hurt your neck, and b) the whole plaza is bathed in sunshine and you’d go doolally in the heat before finishing your sketch. On the same plaza is the tourist information office, and all I had to do was ask and they gave me a lovely detailed map of the centre of the city. Incidentally this revealed that I had actually gone in a fairly impressive circular detour on my way from the station to the Cathedral. Such is life.

Using the map then I visited a nineteenth century market, just as it was closing up for siesta time, and crossed the Rio Segura on a different bridge from the old bridge I’d used earlier. Walking back along the side of the river towards the old bridge I came upon a good angle showing the bridge, and the tower of the cathedral, with, more importantly, a bench in the shade to sketch it from. This is the second sketch I made today.

I had two things left by this time. The first was to sort out some sustenance. I’d bought a couple of queso y jamon boccadillas (aka cheese and ham baguettes (aka cheese and ham long crusty rolls) ) earlier before catching the train. Having polished these off I was looking for a little more. I passed a pasteleria and saw what I took to be a tray of cheese pastries in the window. I bought one, bit into it, and found that what I had taken to be light yellow cheese was actually custard. Gotta be honest, it was delicious, for all that. Then it was a gentle walk to the station, incidentally passing by tpday’s winner of the Most Unusual Name For A Museum Award – Museo de la Ciencia y Agua de Murcia (The Museum of Science and Water of Murcia). I’ll be honest, I was tempted to have a look inside, but time was getting on, and so I headed back to the station.

Nothing particularly interesting to report occurred on the way back to the Casa Me Duck, but something interesting happened when I got there. I was sitting in the living room, minding my own business, reading my kindle, when the sofa started to shake from side to side. Honestly, it was an earth tremor, and it went on for it must have been about half of minute. Apparently it’s not uncommon here, and the houses have been built so that they can withstand any amount of tremors of this strength – which I believe from reports locally to have been about 4. Well, I can promise you all that it is the only time that the Earth has moved or will move for me on this trip. (Oh, be fair, you can’t say that you didn’t expect that one, surely.)

So that was the trip to Murcia – nice place and I enjoyed. Tomorrow it’s Alicante. More foolishness? Can’t promise anything. Watch this space. Adios.