Day in Valdepeñas

I had a relaxed start: unable to collect my bike until late morning and with the museums not opening until after ten there was no point in going to one beforehand. With my bike returned, making the right noises and not moving in places it should not, I felt complete again. A working bike, and carrying some basic sleeping equipment and food, gives a sense of freedom and independence when on a long journey but it is quite a liability when it fails you.

Wine related door

Plaza Mayor Fountain 

Afterwards, as I headed to the Wine Museum, I was struck again by the relaxed nature of the city and the sense that Valdepeñas is there for its people rather than any influx of tourists. The museum itself was a smart but simple affair. There were some quotes about Valdepeñas wine from travellers over the years - Laurie Lee was not included - and information on wine production in the region over the centuries. For me one of the most interesting things was a selection of photographs taken in the 1950s of wine production in the area; those pictures and the equipment on display from the same era - bottle cleaning, corking, labelling, crushing - showed that even then this was a labour intensive business and that wine fermentation was still being carried out in massive clay vats. 

I stopped off in the aging Plaza Mayor with its white and indigo buildings, central fountain featuring a wine press and its sixteenth century church, to enjoy a glass of local wine and some lunch. It wasn’t that late but it was already late enough that the siesta timings meant I now had to wait until the evening to visit the Valdepeñas museum. 

It was early evening by the time I made it to the city museum. It is located in the shell of a sixteenth century house and consisted largely of more paintings and sculptures by local and other artists. There was an interesting section on finds from a Bronze Age settlement in the area and you could also go down into the coolness of the large, deep cellar of the original building, carved from the rock beneath the building and crowded with its large clay wine vats.

Tomorrow I head over another mountain range, the Sierra Morena, and into Andalucía with the hope of being in Cordoba in two days time. After that it is Seville and then south towards the coast.