As I write this, there is a shortage of certain types of vegetable in the UK. It’s fine here and I won’t rehearse the well-documented reasons why the UK was worst hit by the shortage caused by colder than usual weather here (Brexit is part of it, but actually our whole food supply chain is the real problem – read about it if you care. And you should care).

The reason that matters is that the road to Almeria through beautiful Andalicia, becomes a road through Almeria province which is much less beautiful, in my opinion. It is much less green – beautiful in its own way, but brown, scrubby, still dramatic and rugged, just not as beautiful. And the main reason is the endless polytunnels. The whole landscape is completely covered in plastic and it is really a blight.

The reality of eating completely British food all year round would be horrible (and not that healthy), but there’s something wrong here. I’m not going to go on about it – there are other, better qualified people such as the BBC R4 food programme. It would be a bit like me shouting on twitter about politics (which I’ve stopped doing), it is like Zoe Williams said in a recent article in the Guardian: I am standing in front of an orchestra blowing a kazoo because I think they need the help.

Almeria itself, however, is a beautiful city.

The centre is lovely, the most beautiful thing about it is the Alcazaba. You can only get into a bit of it while they restore the rest of it, but it’s the main part. The rest is a long curtain wall and another fortress on the next hill. I’d have loved to go there as there’s a huge Christ in front of it, but you can’t get there at the moment.

The main thing is that, apart from being about 800 years old, it has water flowing through it in very beautiful ways. I’ll let the pictures do the rest.

>> Part 2. Torrevieja. The Bognor Blanca