The gateway to the Jimena castle

A lot of work has been completed up at the castle, and the gateway has been cleaned and some beautiful Moorish tiles have been exposed. To the right is an upsidedown tile with Latin writing on it (so my Latin reading man tells me anyway) I scrambled up to a ledge just by the entrance to draw this, which was great as I was up and out of the way of all the tourists (most of whom didn’t look up my way) I did get a few cheery waves though 🙂 I made sure no one was passing as I knew coming down would be harder….I got a bit of a numb bum sitting up there for about an hour and a half and couldn’t quite finish it but I rather like the unfinished effect 🙂

So those are the tiles – I didn’t get a chance to do them all- you can see there is another higher arch and they have put a walkway across the top.

Latin tile.

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The archway from the flume by the river

Along side our river Hozgaranta is a ‘flume’, or canal as I have been calling it. It was constructed to carry water for the ‘fábrica de bombas’, the bomb factory, where cannon balls were made for the Spanish navy in the 18th century.  This archway is right next to a dam across the river, where the flume seems to end. The dam was constructed in order to provide water for the waterwheel, which in turn powered the furnace. I have shamelessly lifted this information out of the wonderful Francis Cherry’s book entitled ‘A short guide to Jimena de la Frontera’. Francis knows so much about Jimena and chats effortlessly to all the locals in fluent Spanish and it quite puts me to shame.

I struggled with this sketch as it was so dark AND light down there, and to be honest I couldn’t see well with or without glasses…so I finished it using some photos. Anyway, that’s what it is!