Our typical exploratory excursions, sans GPS, consist of defining a destination or three, making a wrong turn or two, and at least once impulsively detouring to explore something that whispers of old stuff to look around.  ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

On the way to — some place or other, I cannot quite remember now — we spotted a sign easily translated even with our muy poco Español as: Castle of Castles. Both enthusiastic about historic fortifications and ancient sites, we made a rapid u-turn and headed for Castell de Castells.

The village of Castell de Castells, like so many Spanish mountain communities, clings to a steep hillside. A major road passes by its feet, and the promise of the “castle of castles” — with no immediate visible battlements, towers, or walls upon approach — taunts passers-by to head in amongst the jumbled buildings. 

Town planning

If there was ever any strategic planning in the layout of a rural Spanish town, then it was surely made over far too many bottles of suspiciously cheap wine, with no further attempt to settle the plans under the assumption they were appropriately laid down the first time. 

The streets of Castell de Castells appear to lead you perpetually uphill, taking you deeper and deeper into the clutches of the town with each neck-straining twist and turn. They rapidly transform from ‘quite narrow streets’ to ‘nothing more than gaps between rows of houses’. They become so narrow, that a pedestrian navigating the same ‘gap’ must dive into a doorway recess to allow a car’s passage (I am convinced one woman we saw on two occasions had to breathe-in, too).

You might expect such a constricted passages to have a one-way system to avoid vehicles meeting when travelling in opposite directions. You would be wrong. These were officially two-way roads, as highlighted by a sprinkle of other cars here and there, tucked into corners and recesses, facing in different directions. Thankfully, we were spared the opportunity to negotiate (in Spanish and Bad-Spanish) as to who should reverse and give way. (A negotiation made doubly tricky by the roads being too narrow to exit the car and attempt the exchange in the first place!)

You find yourself on the same stretch of road more than once, but no matter how you try, you are ever facing in the wrong direction to attempt to back-track to your point of entry. Perhaps the other vehicles collected in nooks are simply the abandoned transport of previously entrapped tourists who had similarly never discovered a way out.

There are corners, too

Dead-ends are commonplace. Tangled streets taunt the weary with the promise of escape, only to terminate with an un-drivable incline, or someone’s garage.

After several twists and turns, enough at least to have us make the decision to forget the castle and simply get the heck out of the town, we spotted a street notably wider than the rest. Along it were several parked cars, and some building work in progress. There appeared to be a left turn at the far end. “Hey!” we exclaimed, “This looks like a road people use more regularly.” We turned and found ourselves being forced to turn left into the narrowest street of all.

I suspect you think I am exaggerating, but the 90 degree turn into this street — which after perhaps two car lengths then turned 90 degrees to the right — was barely wide enough to accept our little Ford Fiesta hire car. We sat for a moment considering the options and decided reversing to be the better choice (the other roads were still narrow, but nowhere near as narrow as which lay that ahead). 

Decision made, I crunched into reverse, looked in my mirror and saw a van rapidly approaching from behind. Hemmed in! “This is how they get you,” I thought, “trap you in a corner then close-off each opportunity to escape until your hopes of freedom dwindle into mere hopes of survival.” Perhaps the entire village had become infertile and the only way for them to avoid extinction was to trap unwary travellers and gradually transform them into locals. At least I would more quickly become fluent in Spanish.

Our hesitation in negotiating the gap ahead prompted the van driver to emerge. “We are lost!” we admitted in our best phrase-book Spanish, expecting the patient local to suggest how we should reverse and be on our way.

Instead, he reeled off a series of directions that, with no hesitation or concern for vehicle size relative to street width, clearly indicated we should just pop on ahead to the left, make a right, then another right, and finally sweep left. We asked that he repeat, slower, after we informed him of our poor Spanish, and he did so, gesticulating more dramatically to assure us our path lay ahead. I simply stared, eyes front, predicting how our hire deposit was about to be scraped off the sides of the car as we attempted to make our way along what were, to our guide at least, perfectly adequate streets.

I am not sure how we did it

But we did. With wing mirrors adjusted for maximum view of the extremities of the car’s rear, we made out clutch-grinding way around the first corner — I estimate with around a centimetre to spare on the driver’s side — then the almost immediate right turn with a similar margin for error. The final right turn, again a full 90 degrees, posed the additional challenge of being briefly but sharply up hill. Hastily patched house wall corners suggested not everyone had survived the manoeuvre unscathed. 

The roads then almost immediately widened. Still not ample space for even the most careful two-way traffic, but compared to our recent experience a veritably motorway. 

I realised we were still heading up. Other than a brief descent into the street with the parked cars, we had been nose-up all the while. 

Unsure of exactly where this hopeful, wider road might take us, we drove slowly past a group of workmen, waiting for them to begin shouting and gesticulating that we were about to drive into another dead end. But all was well. A sharp, low-gear drop and we found ourselves on a major road once more.

I have driven around many narrow paths in both Spain and Malta, but never have I had to negotiate such ridiculous slivers of wing-mirror scuffing streets. I believe we might have been the talk of the town for the next few days as the tourists that got away.

Castell de Castells

Apparently, the area is a regular focus for walkers and mountain bikers. The castle does indeed exist, and, according to Wikipedia, consists of remains of an old Arabic fortification – I guess that should be more accurately termed Moorish fortification. There are also some nearby rock formations forming a natural arch, and remnants of 5000 year old cave paintings.

There is certainly enough reason there to revisit Castell de Castells one day and look around properly. I hope by the time we return, they have Park-and-Ride.

jEN’s post on Castell de Castells

Related posts

• The secret absinthe (3)
• Real, big-boy maps in my pocket (0)
• They fixed it (1)
• The glorious mechanics of film (0)
• Pinch me? I’m already awake. (5)

Free audio books also have a good selection of atrocious production values, and are littered with dull voices, uninteresting readings, and are just plain difficult to listen to. A handful, however, are of a quality that surpasses many of the professional productions, and these really do stand out from the crown, being completely free and very enjoyable.

When I was preparing and researching the production style for TableRappers Persistent Spirit, I listened to a lot of free and commercial audio books. Sadly, I found the vast majority of them too poor in the quality of either the production – background noise, hum, low levels, etc – or in the voice performance to be something I would ever choose to listen to. They did, however, help me to set the bar for how to produce my own audio book and have contributed to the quality of every element of the production.

Is free too big a risk?

The perception that free means poor quality, will inevitably hold back a large slice of potential audience from taking the plunge and dipping their ears into an audio book. Which is a big shame because most audio book authors and producers are striving to improve their content and give it the best chance of a broader audience. I also wonder whether the audience finds it difficult to comprehend why an author would go to all the trouble of writing and producing the audio without any apparent direct financial gain – I would guess the assumption is one of desperation, that the book is so bad no publisher will touch it.

How to reach out

Still, no matter how good it is, word of mouth will remain the primary means of building audience for audio book creators. This means that the old adage of ‘content is king’ is critical to the book’s success. Recommendation, either directly or through trusted reviews, is the single most powerful motivator to have someone try out a slice of new content, and that will only ever happen if the content is compelling.

TableRappers Persistent Spirit, is a free downloadable, original audio book, distributed in weekly chapters. Read some of the reviews here.

Related posts

• Minor Technicality 49 – Press gang culture (0)
• Where is the castle? (0)
• Flyposter FTW at this year’s Digital Music Awards (0)
• Brass band flash mob (ish) – the video (6)
• The boys are (almost) back in town (0)

Related posts

• The secret absinthe (3)
• Another San Francisco (0)
• A very different rhythm (2)
• They fixed it (1)
• The glorious mechanics of film (0)

Another Minor Technicality and it’s almost Christmas

It’s already December 16th and time to give a little Christmas spirit with a handful of Christmas promos from a few other UK shows. This episode comes to you courtesy of the British transport system, the British aptitude for selfishness, and the British attitude for getting away with stuff. There’s also stuff about beeping toasters, and a very unique, sneak preview of the latest piece of music for TableRappers.com. Music from Neil Smith and Carey Bell.
Christmas messages from: Darkcompass – Traces of Nuts – Podzone – Photowalkthrough
Running time: 36 minutes Direct download

Related posts

• Where is the castle? (0)
• Capturing a journey back to Spain (0)
• The tech vampire and embracing fulfillment (9)
• Project overload (2)
• The storm before the calm (4)