The story about the ringing bells

Yesterday I mentioned that when we were in Granada there was a constant lineup of people ringing the bell at the tower of the Alhambra. And that the bell rang all day and you could hear it from pretty much anywhere. It was kind of annoying.

Well I just couldn't see that being the case every day, so Ruth did some research.

It turns out that this is a "thing" only on January 2nd!

Nowadays, it is only on January 2nd that the Watch Tower and its bell are in the minds of all the inhabitants of the city. That was the date when the Catholic Monarchs took the city and the tradition says that every young woman who is still single and who strikes the bell, will get married before the end of the year. 

So, there's the explanation. We didn't notice while we were up there if it is only young single women ringing the bell, but I doubt it!

Tuesday morning, we headed out of the city. The dump station in the motorhome parking was busy, so I found one listed at a gas station along our route. Fortunately there is no shortage of motorhome service points in Spain.

Heading west on the main highway.

Our original intention was to head down to the coast just past Malaga. But we didn't get very far! We're going to have to put some miles on one of these days though because it's already January 4th and we want to cross into Morocco sometime between January 8 and January 10. We're leaving from Algeciras and that's still 250 kms away. I know, we could do that in a day if we had to. 

We stopped in Loja to do some groceries, and found a decent quiet overnight spot so we simply decided to stay right there. Kind of a lazy day though, and we didn't even go for a walk around town.

We've now decided to avoid the coast completely, so we are not headed down to Malaga. I was reading back on when we were in this area in January 2017 and some of the comments I made at that time were that we didn't like the coastal area at all... too built up and congested and I've read that it's even worse this year with the number of motorhomes in the area. 

So we're going to take the inland route which coincidentally will take us through the town of Ronda. We've been there before, but not with the motorhome. The weather is holding up nicely for us, so no need to gain a couple more degrees by being on the coast. Forecast high today is 18C with sunshine, so although we have to put the furnace on for a half hour first thing in the morning, we're totally fine with that.

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