There follows an unedited account of our first few days holiday.
There will be more and loads of pictures soon.

We got into Sanlucar de Barrameda yesterday afternoon having made only one mistake on the route from Manilva.
We had been only two hours on the road but had totally moved both Geographically and culturally. Once we had passed the Rock of Gibraltar we had moved out from the modern area of British colonisation and back into Spanish Spain, we had also moved from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic.
We had passed through all the hideous built up seaside towns of the Med and into the Cotton Fields (they were harvesting the cotton with huge harvesters) and vineyards of that area between Cadiz, Jerez and Sanlucar which some call the Sherry Triangle.
Sanlucar –which looks like a town on the atlas- is in fact a city of Waterford proportions.
There the comparison ends.
In the packed and narrow labyrinth of back streets in the Barrio Altro, the old town where we had rented an apartment, all the houses were whitewashed with ornate wrought iron window coverings and streets so narrow that passage, let alone parking, were extremely difficult. We didn’t find out house (even though it was number 1, it was next to number 12, it turned out) but arranged to meet our landlady, Cruz, outside the church of Notre Senñora de la O.
She said she would be about ten minutes, she could have been an hour because as we waited outside the church wedding party began to arrive.
The Style was fantastic.
All the men were in glistening Mohair suits (remember them) some in a yellowish beige which made them look as though dressed in cloth of gold.
The ladies, all very glamorous, were in the shortest of mini-skirts with amazing rouched and ruffled dresses but it was the matching shoes which were a wonder.
Always the same colour as the dress ( or at least the handbag) they were as high as heels could be and frequently had complicated ribbon systems which fastened in bows or even little bunches of flowers about the ankles. In the really stylish couples the mans tie was the same colour as the ladies dress.
They were a triumph.
A lot of guitarists, carrying their instruments also arrived so there was obviously going to be a Flamenco element to the service.
I had scooted for a quick look at the church before their arrival and it is a prime example of the Spanish Baroque, the entire altar wall is gilded with cherubs angles and saints.
Cruz- pronounced Cruth, soon arrived and brought us to the few houses away which was to be our home for the week.
The doorway was impressive but nothing like as impressive as what was inside.
We were led through a large Moorish courtyard, tiled in black and white and with an ornate well in the middle, then through another and another until we came to climb the stairs to our apartment.
We were right up on the top of the building with a huge terrace right over the town of Sanlucar with a view to the mouth of the Guadalquiver from where Columbus set out to find America.
A true balcony over Europe.

I had picked Sanlucar with a pin on the map as I looked for the first town on the Atlantic west of Gibraltar which looked big enough to have sufficient restaurants where we could eat out every night without repeating ourselves.
We have spent the last six months, indeed the last four years if you count preparation time, getting our Chambre d’Hote in the Languedoc in the south of France up and running.
The running meant that since June last I had been cooking nearly every night for anything from four to twelve hungry people from the kitchen of Thezan les Beziers.
This was to be our first holiday proper since that time we had found Le Presbytere now over four years ago.

I had picked Spain for the possibility of a bit of heat left in the wintering sun and because my old pal and best man, Michael lived in Manilva and would give us a base to explore the region.
Michael true to his word, went and explored Sanlucar for us, gave it a double thumbs up, sent me the second half of Neal Stephenson’s swash buckling best seller “The Confusion” (set partially in Sanlucar, partially in Co Clare) and even tried out some of the restaurants declaring that the fish restaurant strip at the beach at the Baja de Guia was the place to go.
Obediently we set off there last night.
Of course we got hopelessly lost in the back streets, but, as it was the time of the Passeo, when all the family stroll the streets in their best clothes, we had plenty to look at.
At the Baja de Guia you pick the fish we want to eat, the shell fish looked magnificent, and then you pick how it is cooked, fried grilled, or sealed in salt.

The Dublin Bay Prawns were a frightening €110 a kilo, lobster something less so we plumped for some Dorados, Sea Bream, a mere snip at €45 the kilo.
We blanched just a little when the waiter told us that we would need a kilo for the two of us, but, emboldened by our first copita of Manzanilla we went for it and furthermore , lost the run of our selves by ordering a plate of Clams A l’Andaluse between the pair of us for a starter.

The clams were delicious, the sauce hot with garlic and just a touch of chilli used up just about all of our bread as we fought to mop up the remaining smears on the plate.
Then the waiters came out with two large Dorados, still entombed in salt for our approval before serving us.
These were taken away and brought back stripped of salt, skin and bones, huge platefuls of moist Sea Bream with some sharp Olive oil on the side and a salad of meticulously charred and skinned red and green peppers.
I don’t think I have ever eaten better fish.
The salt had preserved all the essences of the freshest of fish (we could just make out the fishing boats moored about 20 metres away) the olive oil and the peppers made the simplest and best accompaniment and again I had to ask for more bread to make sure I lost none of the juices.
We graduated from a glass of Manzanilla each to sharing a bottle of the same with our main courses. This was an excellent decision.
The slightly salty tang of the wine was just made for salt baked bream.
We neither wanted nor looked for anything else and waddled home content.
The wedding was still being celebrated in the Bodega of Barbadillo , the largest producer of Manzanilla in the town, just next door to us, and it may well have gone on for many hours after I fell asleep.

Just on the other side of our apartment is the palace of Medina Sidonia, the last home of the Red Duchess who divided her time between tormenting Franco from exile and then consolidating the archives of her family, at one time believed the richest in Europe, and still extremely wealthy.
The palace is open to visitors only on Sunday morning and our luck was in as there was a Swedish group booked in that Sunday and their tour was to be in English. and they let us join in.
The palace is amazing, full of Spanish art and antiques, some paintings by Goya, several tapestries designed by Rembrandt.

After the tour we went to a nearby Galician bar (bear in mind we are still within 100 metres of our apartment) where we ate an enormous salad of Tuna and Tomato (we left half of it behind) with bread and further copitas of Manzanilla for the princely sum of €13 for the two of us.

So far my ambition of eating all meals out is working; lunch in El Gallego was followed by a walk on the beach and a trip to the nearby beach town of Chipiona where we indulged in icecreams in a beach café.
That evening we decided we were only fit for a light supper and so sat at a bar in the Plaza San Roque and had plates of Boccorones Fritos (deep fried anchovies) and chips with further copitas of Manzanilla for me and red wine for Sile.
This time the bill was €16, or €8 a head.
On the way back up the hill from the restaurant we reckoned that to have bought the food and drink in the market and cooked it at home would have cost us more.