Jerez   LEJR

Date of Visit = July 1998

Pilot: = Chris Belton

e-mail = chris@yarboo.freeserve.co.uk

Field Report =We flew down from Gibraleón. Direct routing was not possible owing to the Restricted Area, the National Park of Coto Doñana based on the estuary of the mighty Guadalquivir. Not even tourists on foot are allowed in it, except a few organised parties. We enjoyed a scenic flight past it along the coast, then got permission from the navy base at Rota to track east through the Gulp of Cadiz and through their Danger and Restricted Areas, which extend to within five NM of Jerez.

We had a job finding the airport, which doesn’t show up in the barren landscape, and a growing problem as we went south was the unreliability of the water features. There was no sign of the swamps marked on the map, reservoirs had either appeared from nowhere or radically changed size and shape as they shrank in the heat, and most of the rivers had simply disappeared without trace. To cap it all, I’d managed to get the VOR frequency wrong (I hadn’t checked it since I thought we wouldn’t need it).

Jerez is an airport of entry, and we were going there for customs clearance on our way to Tangiers. They sent a van to pick us up, and the driver waited patiently while a man with a grievance, who had emerged from a flying club, regaled me with stories about how he was one of the founders of the airport and it was going downhill fast, and we should complain about the fact that the two rows of parking stands were marked out in such a way that the aircraft stood back to back, with potentially serious consequences if something big started up behind our little Cessna.

We never did mention the fact, since I was hoping while we were in Jerez to visit the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art,and they told us at the very efficient information desk that there was a performance at 1100 hrs, so we jumped straight into the nearest taxi and got there just in time.

It was all very touristy, but some of the horse work was pretty good. We then trudged into town with our bags and found a tourist office, which gave us a list of hotels and a map, and we got rooms at less than 20 GBP in the first one. Then we looked round the town and went, for a small fee, to a sherry tasting session at the Gonzalez Byass cellars. We’d worked up quite an appetite by about 11 o’clock at night and were surprised and disappointed to find most of the eating houses shut (I suppose because it’s quite a small place compared with, say, Granada). A few bars offered us tapas, and one place offered us “raciones” - bigger portions than tapas, but we were starving by then and wanted something altogether more substantial, so we left and kept on looking, until everywhere was shut, then had to make do with packets of crisps from our emergency supplies.

In all it seemed a nice airport, not too big or busy. I wonder how the training school which moved there from Prestwick is getting on? The climate’s got to be an improvement!

Photos: John Hardy