A wing and a prayer!
No wonder pilgrims (and flamingos) flock to Spain’s wild sanctuary
THE Coto Donana National Park is Europe’s largest nature reserve and a Unesco World Heritage Site — which was all news to me. Ashamedly, it had hardly registered on my ornithological radar. Not so for my father-in-law, Noel, an experienced birder who’d longed to visit Europe’s most important wetland, nd, on Spain’s south-western costa an hour’s drive from Seville.
Getting there was thrilling enough as we pulled into El Rocio at dusk on the edge of the park and checked into Hotel Toruno.
Arriving in a car seemed inappropriate because this is a cowboy town where you expect to see a Spanish Lone Ranger shooting cans off the wooden fences where locals tether their horses.
There’s no Tarmac in this frontier outpost, just sandy tracks, a few bars and one or two shops selling leather riding boots and religious mementos linked to the Virgin of El Rocio.
More than a million pilgrims flock here at Pentecost (50 days after Easter) as she is said to help those with fertility issues.
WE TOOK our seats at one of the hotel’s rickety outdoor tables and prayed someone might come for our order. But it was only 8pm and the restaurant was not officially open until 8.30pm. We British love to eulogise about the Mediterranean lifestyle, but at times it’s infuriating and certainly doesn’t help deal with the national debt. But we were allowed a bottle of local wine and sat underneath a 1,000-year- old olive tree colonised by chattering sparrows until the appointed hour, after which we devoured half the menu.
We got talking to a British couple who told us the salt marsh was all dried up and we wouldn’t see any flamingos, cranes or rare herons and should come back in spring or after the rains.
But we felt reassured that the Donana National Park offers a feast of assorted wildlife, not just a set menu of migrating birds.
Next morning, we rose early and headed for the park’s visitor centre, where huge fourwheel-drive, 20seater buses were waiting. Ours was driven by Gonzalo, who gave a brilliant commentary in Spanish and English. Noel said Gonzalo’s ability to spot rarities from a distance, such as the slender- billed gull, Audouin’s gull, Kentish plover, whimbrel and many other birds of interest, was astounding.
His prize sighting was of a majestic Spanish imperial eagle perched on a tree surveying the mile upon mile of flat territory.
After a couple of minutes, it rose on huge, black 6ft wings, banked like a jumbo jet and headed into the distance.
Later, we saw another on top of a tree where, Gonzalo said, it would remain still for hours. The park covers 210 sq miles and comprises beach, sand dunes, scrubland and the massive delta of the Guadalquivir River.
It’s so named after Ana de Silva y Mendoza, wife of the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia because she built a residence here.
Later, in the 18th century, the artist Goya is known to have visited the Duchess of Alba at the Palacio de Donana when she was its proprietress.
We started on the beach (an 18mile stretch of unadulterated sand) where fishermen were wading into the surf pushing what looked like lawn mowers.
EVOKING a centuries- old image, they harvested shells and cockles from the seabed, though these hardy men arrived by Vespa, rather than horse and cart. Then we headed inland — but only just, taking six attempts to surmount the ridge at the back of the beach, in the shadow of thousands of umbrella trees that help regenerate the dunes by binding the loose sand. As we moved through the reserve, we came across wild horses, red deer — magnificent with big antlers — fallow deer and wild boar, some with their scruffy little piglets in tow.
We did not see the rare Iberian lynx, which is said to inhabit the Coto Donana, but Gonzalo pointed out the tracks of larks, lizards and all kinds of other creepy crawlies.
Recently, a new resort town called Matalascanas has popped up on the edge of the reserve — and it has its own migratory principles, much to the horror of men such as Gonzalo.
Two of the Donana’s precious lynxes have been run over by cars on the busy road to the resort and birds that have overflown the fences have been gunned down by trigger-happy hunters.
All the more reason to head firmly for Coto Donana National Park. This is a costa of an entirely different kind.
TRAVEL FACTS
DOUBLE rooms at Hotel Toruno cost from £46 B&B (0034 959 442 323, toruno.es). BA (0344 493 0787,
ba.com) flies from Gatwick to Seville from £87 return.