One Man in Spain

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...