Fly like a Bird

I've loved trains ever since as a 3 year old my great uncle took me up to South Croydon railway station and the guard used to let me wave the trains off. I even had my own whistle and red and green flags. So it has been a special treat to do some travelling around Spain in the latest thing in train fashion - the AVE (which is short for Alta Velocidad Española but also means "bird" in Spanish).  And it really flies. We clocked over 300 kmh on the way from Valencia to Madrid, a journey which now takes just over an hour and a half.

Spain has more high speed rail track than any other country and more is on the way (subject of course to the country not running out of cash). The plan is that 90% of the population will be within fifty miles of an AVE station and in the last few months new sections have opened to both Valencia and Alicante.

We've been dying to find a reason to use it and hence the visit to Seville, which we didn't get to in March on our last visit to Andalucia. We weren't disappointed. There is plenty of space and the ride is very comfortable, which resulted in a fair amount of snoring on the way to Madrid, to which we may even have contributed.

The speed is such that on Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast in Sevilla, picnic lunch in Retiro Park in the centre of Madrid and were in Valencia before 4pm to pick the car up to drive home!