One Man in Spain

If you haven't seen it have a look on the " HOME " page at the top this page for my latest post. A summary and update of 2017.  onemantravelling.com  is my new website which hosts all of my blogs: tenerifebybus ( IN TENERIFE ), onemaninsouthafrica ( IN SOUTH AFRICA ), onemaninthailand ( IN THAILAND ), onemaninbulgaria (IN BULGARIA), onemanineurope ( IN EUROPE ) and onemaninspain (currently  IN SPAIN ). Stop the press:  New posts added from France to  onemantravelling.com   - my adventures through 2018 and onward...    I promise that I will complete the story of my journey across Europe and other places as soon as I can. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, there always seems to be a new horizon ahead.

It is the morning of the 17th December 2017 and I am making my second journey from Madrid to France, the last by road in 2013, this time continuing my adventure by train from the Black Sea to the North Sea. My train leaves from Madrid Atocha ,one of the main railway stations in the capital. To get there my hosts for the past couple of months, Gonzales and Maria, drive me the kilometre or so to the local station where I board the local commuter much beloved of my journeys around Madrid. This drops me at Atocha where a change of area and of platform will be required. At first I thought that I was in the wrong place and entering the departure platform for the airport but no, it my train to France. I pass through airport like security where my ticket, baggage and person are checked. I seem to remember that this is a standard procedure on the high speed trains as I had to undergo the same checks when travelling from Segovia to Madrid a few years ago. As I am in the Schengen area my passpo...

(I write this on the 7th November 2022....) Hi folks, well it's some time since I wrote so here goes.... I had a visit from a good friend of mine recently who was a self confessed avid reader of my blogs. I explained that, as a result of my epic train journey across  my epic train journey giving so much material it became a daunting task to catch up. My return to the UK at the time of our permanent departure from the European Union rapidly followed by the Covid lockdown and subsequent economic turmoil including the war in Ukraine reduced my frame of mind to mush. I could not bring myself to "blog".  I feel especially sad about the Russian/Ukrainian situation as these were both countries I would have liked to visit at the time of my residence in Bulgaria. Sadly the annexation of Crimea prevented this.  I was recently looking for a new set of photographs for my TV screensaver when I realised how many of my travels have not been uploaded and reported upon. So why start here,...

A friend of mine in Portugal, whom I shall not now get to visit, showed me some photographs of quarrying in his area. This prompted me to look at some photographs I took at a "Marble and Granite" stonemasons in Colmenar de Oreja. This is one of the seven cities which, along with the capital, make up Madrid. I was trying to enter items on my blogs in date order but time and tide as we say in England; so I thought that I would include this on my new web page. After I arrived in Madrid at the, almost, end of my epic train journey in July 2017, I went to stay with my friends from Tenerife who also have a house in Los Arroyos, El Escorial. I had visited this location before when I was staying in Tenerife and have lots of adventures to relate eventually. To the point, José Luis was born in Colmenar and was in the process of updating a house there. I travelled through with him on several occasions giving me an opportunity to reacquaint myself with this wonderful and historic p...

During August 2013 I was staying with friends in Madrid when we decided to visit Aulos in France where my sister and her husband lived. Jose-Luis planned the journey with a final check by his wife Teresa. A rather portly me looked on. Travelling by car would restrict the views and items of interest I could capture as I was the "back seat driver" on eye level with the crash barriers alongside the road. I deleted more photos than I kept due to this, cropping would not work as the focus was distorted too. Later as we climbed into the clouds swirling around the mountains the rains then darkness came precluding photography altogether. We departed mid-morning on the 6th from the residence in Colmenar de Oreja, Madrid heading in the direction of Barcelona before turning north parallel to the coast until we entered the Pyrenees. My first encounter with one of the many tunnels cut through these mountains. We were now climbing into the mountains through the province of Catalonia. F...

Did you know that the Canary Islands, way out there in the Atlantic somewhere off the coast of North Africa is actually a province of Spain.  I started blogging when I journeyed to Tenerife to live there for a year.  My first blog was called 'Tenerife by Bus' as that was my mode of transport affording me a means of discovering the island and it's hidden gems, festivals and sheer beauty.  Anyone can follow in my footsteps using 'TITSA' buses - no need to spend all your time on the beach! As my travels expanded I have standardised on the 'One Man in' format but 'Tenerife by Bus' will remain sacrosanct.  One Man in Spain will, therefore, cover my travels on mainland Spain starting in Madrid. Where else?  I discovered on arrival that Madrid is, in fact, composed of ten cities not one as I had always assumed.