A flight-free adventure between the UK and North Africa offers the romance of slow travel alongside the opportunity to get to know some of Europe’s most famous artists, finds Diana Jarvis
My stop-off points would be other places that lay claim to famous artists: Vincent Van Gogh (Arles), Salvador Dalí (Figueres) and Pablo Picasso (Málaga) and see how they compare before heading onwards to Tarifa and the boat across to Morocco.
The lands fill with fields of olives, vines, pretty farmhouses with elegant heavenwards cypress trees – modern life tacked onto a scene from a Van Gogh painting.
I was in awe of his forethought, and it reminded me of the way Tracey Emin is currently transforming the arts landscape back home in Margate (except with much less narcissistic bravado and more pay-it-forward mentoring support for emerging artists).
Although that was it for my forays into art, I was surprised an artist movement hasn’t yet established itself in Tarifa; wandering along the causeway between the calm Mediterranean Sea and the wilder Atlantic Ocean, I was awed by the beguiling painterly light that no camera sensor will adequately capture.
The tension of the previous days’ rapid travel evaporated and I whiled away some hours nibbling pastries in the Parisian-style tea houses and seafood dinner at an unassuming hole-in-the-wall restaurant Saveur de Poisson.
I changed trains for a slightly less plush one and the eucalypts outside were replaced with palm trees, the crops by parched, denuded earth with goats snuffling and power lines on matchsticks criss-cross the barren landscape.
The original article contains 1,549 words, the summary contains 226 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
My stop-off points would be other places that lay claim to famous artists: Vincent Van Gogh (Arles), Salvador Dalí (Figueres) and Pablo Picasso (Málaga) and see how they compare before heading onwards to Tarifa and the boat across to Morocco.
The lands fill with fields of olives, vines, pretty farmhouses with elegant heavenwards cypress trees – modern life tacked onto a scene from a Van Gogh painting.
I was in awe of his forethought, and it reminded me of the way Tracey Emin is currently transforming the arts landscape back home in Margate (except with much less narcissistic bravado and more pay-it-forward mentoring support for emerging artists).
Although that was it for my forays into art, I was surprised an artist movement hasn’t yet established itself in Tarifa; wandering along the causeway between the calm Mediterranean Sea and the wilder Atlantic Ocean, I was awed by the beguiling painterly light that no camera sensor will adequately capture.
The tension of the previous days’ rapid travel evaporated and I whiled away some hours nibbling pastries in the Parisian-style tea houses and seafood dinner at an unassuming hole-in-the-wall restaurant Saveur de Poisson.
I changed trains for a slightly less plush one and the eucalypts outside were replaced with palm trees, the crops by parched, denuded earth with goats snuffling and power lines on matchsticks criss-cross the barren landscape.
The original article contains 1,549 words, the summary contains 226 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!