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Ruta Bancos Gigantes or Huge Bench Route in Andalucia

A new rage is slowly spreading across Andalucia with its beginnings in the province of Malaga and that is huge benches are being installed in beauty spots across the region. The Huge Bench Route or  Ruta Bancos Gigantes #rutabancosgigantes can be found on Instagram  where they are more active with updates on the new installations of these enormous benches and they have a   Facebook  page too. Map of the Ruta Bancos Gigantes The initiative started by Forest Green an agrobroker company that supplies and works with treated wood to large construction and environmental companies in Spain. The huge bench route is steadily growing, with constant new installations spreading across Andalucia. The enormous handmade wooden benches are 4 metre long and 2.3 metre high, with the seat being 1.3 metres above ground and needing steps to get onto them, appearing in natural beauty spots hopes to encourage people out into and  enjoy the views and of course take photos to be ...
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Homemade and Organic Wine Time

Back in September I was coerced into doing something with my abundant grape crop by one of my rather large and scary Spanish neighbours. Then in February I dried orange peel because when making orange juice to try and get through the carrier bags full of home grown oranges we'd been given I couldn't bear to put all the peels in the bin (I don't put food in rubbish and they can't go in the worm compost bag).

I'd been feeling rather pleased with my domesticity (see post Becoming More Españolised - drying orange-peel domesticated) waste not want not, recycle everything and all that and I'd need the dried orange peel for this years batch of wine (or vinegar) and for firelighters, (although I can't for the life of me remember where I've stored the jars right now).


So from September I'd been having impatient glances at the demijohns and thought waiting for May was going to be unbearable. Well May came and went in a whirl of activity, so did June and just last night we finally got around to testing the big jar (the partial one was fantastic vinegar).

Carefully, as instructed, (non of that sterilizing everything, racking off, siphoning off stuff of my past experiences)just pouring it into bottles, then rather apprehensively we tasted the tiniest of sips (we knew what a slurp of vinegar was like) and looked at each other. Another taste and oh my, amazing. Wine. We'd made wine and not just any wine but a nice dry sherry-like wine. Ok it's a bit cloudy at the moment but it is niiiice.

First bottles getting a cork, rest in 5 litre containers

So we now have organic wine, vinegar and dried orange peel on the menu. There'll be no nagging this year, the grape crop will be eagerly awaited and soon harvested.

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