Today (Sunday) is the 22 January 2023 and the town of Conil celebrates its traditional and elaborate Romeria de San Sabastian in which over twenty thousand people travel on foot, horseback or in carts to El Colorado in honour of the festival of its patron.

The Spanish love a good party and this is on a monumental scale and is a tradition which is more than five centuries old, when back in the 16th century, parishioners accompanied their Patron on a pilgrimage on his saint’s day.

Earlier in the 19^th century the tradition was abandoned until around 30 years ago, when it commenced again and the day starts with the Mass of Los Romeros in the Santa Catalina church at 9 in the morning.

The Patron is carried on a cart, preceded by a music band, which enlivens the journey of the rest of the pilgrims and dozens of carts decorated with lace, garlands, flowers and coloured lanterns. A procession that goes through the main streets and lanes of Conil until it reaches the Parish of the Virgin of Fatima, where a welcome prayer is offered to the Patron and the image of San Sebastián is deposited, a valuable carving by the sculptor Pedro Daín dated in 1588.

The car park at the campsite has acquired a few temporary facilities and around lunchtime is a mass of people eating and drinking copiously as the processions winds its way along the main road.

Once in the pine forest, the party begins in earnest, the talk, the music, the revelry and the good times of family and friends willing to enjoy a day in the countryside, where, obviously, there is no shortage of food and drink… until six o’clock in the afternoon when everyone returns to close the day two or three hours later in the church of Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno.

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Earlier in the week we enjoyed a couple of walks from the campsite. One day we walked to Torre Vigía de Castilnovo which is a medieval tower amidst a hiking area around the wetlands of the estuary in Conil. The tower itself is home to several breeding pairs of the Northern Bald Ibis – we didn’t see any today but here is a post from a previous visit, showing clearly the northern Bald Ibis.

Eurotrip 8, 2020 – Day 38 to 40, Walking El Palmar… – Caravan Ramblings

On Wednesday we walked to the port of Conil and ate at El Pastor restaurante.

The food was good, and some of it a bit different. One dish we ordered was shrimp and egg. A huge bowl of small shrimp turned up with a couple of fried eggs on top, which our waitress proceeded to chop-up and mix in with the shrimp.

The shrimp though, were not as expected. They were whole; complete with head, eyes and hairs. Not my cup of tea.

On our way back we stumbled across several caterpillar processions.

The pine processionary is a moth known for the irritating hairs of its caterpillars, their processions, and the economic damage they cause in coniferous forests. The species was first described scientifically by Michael Denis and Ignaz Schiffermüller in 1775, though it was known to the ancients, with remedies described by Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder. Its processionary behaviour was described in 1916 by the French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. It is one of the most destructive species to pines and cedars in Central Asia, North Africa and southern Europe.

The species is notable for the behaviour of its caterpillars, which overwinter in tent-like nests high in pine trees, and which proceed through the woods in nose-to-tail columns, protected from predators by their severely irritating hairs. These hairs can be very detrimental to the health to dogs in particular.

Our route took us past the Hotel Diufain. We’ve never seen it open in the winter months but it’s a lovely looking traditional Spanish building.

And finally we got to say “Hi” to this lovely dog. We’ve known her since she ws a puppy maybe 5 or 6 years ago and she’s as friendly as ever.