Long drive today up the motorways north towards Seville and beyond. Making tracks towards Portugal now that the lens has arrived. We were buffeted by strong winds for most of the way which wasn’t ideal.
Got stuck in a rare traffic jam around Seville but soon out the other side.
We carried on north to the area of the Minas de Rio Tinto to see the red river. It’s an extraordinary place where for thousands of years layer upon layer of copper, silver, iron ore and other minerals have been removed creating terraces of different colours in the rocks. It’s like a landscape from another planet.
The river is a weird red/brown colour, extremely toxic with high levels of iron and heavy metals. Needless to say, there’s not much wildlife about. Plants and wild flowers seem to be doing ok though.
No one is sure if the water colour is caused by the mining or if it just comes out that way because of all the minerals in the rocks …I know one thing, you definitely wouldn’t want to swim in it!
It is supposed to be the most polluted river in Spain anyway, but it doesn’t help when you see that the banks have been used as a dumping ground in places. There was a whole area of glass bottles and another full of tyres!
Sounds awful, but parts of it are really beautiful – I’m not sure what to think to be honest. The tourist train is doing well out of it though -the car park was rammed!