Every May sees the wonderful spectacle of the Jerez Horse Fair or Feria
de Caballo. Spain’s world famous sherry producing town, Jerez de la Frontera, plays host to the most prestigious equine heritage event in the whole of Spain, and one of the most important in Europe.
It attracts many thousands of visitors
each year who come to witness the remarkable displays of horsemanship along with
the bullfights and exhibitions of Sevilliana (flamenco.)
Originally a cattle market the Jerez Horse Fair now has three distinct
branches. There are still the live stock and agricultural machinery
exhibitions then there are the bullfighting and Sevilliana displays
which take place in Hontoria Park. And last but by no means least the
Horse Fair itself.
The daunting feats that the Spanish purebreds and the Andlusian thoroughbreds
perform are absolutely outstanding and the sheer quality of the displays quite remarkable.
It is an extremely packed programme consisting of purebred Arab and
Anglo-Arab in-hand classes, doma vaquera and doma classica – known as
cowboy and classical dressage respectively along with show jumping and vaulting.
However the highlight of the Jerez Horse Fair is undoubtedly the “Como
Bailan los Caballos Andaluces” or the Dancing Andalusian Horses. This is
performed by the world famous Real Escuela de Arte Ecuestre (Royal
School of Equestrian Art) which is based in Jerez itself. This is an
incredible fully fledged equestrian ballet which features choreography
adapted from the training exercises of classical dressage and doma
vaquera, along with Spanish music and costumes. There is one quite remarkable
move known as the cabriole which involves the horse throwing its forelegs and hind
legs in an outward arc before putting its feet to the ground
A side spectacle to the Jerez Horse Fair are the numerous Spaniards
who take great delight in riding up and down the main street, impeccably
dressed a la Andaluz normally with their ladies riding sidesaddle behind them in their
beautiful Sevilliana dresses. Their mounts likewise are beautifully turned out.
It really is a wonderful site and adds much atmosphere and flavour to the
whole event.
A trip to The Annual Jerez Horse Fair should certainly be on the agenda
not only of all horse lovers but also for anyone who wants to sample a taste of
rural Spain at it’s best. Organizing ferias is one thing that the Spanish,
and the Andalusians in particular, excel at and the Feria de Caballo
de Jerez is certainly no exception.
Events details can change;
Please check with the organisers that the event is happening before
making travel arrangements.
Event Details
First date May 2007 tbc (Every year)
Opening Hours Various
Cost Various
Country Spain
State Andalusia
County Cádiz
Town Jerez de La Frontera
Article submitted by
Ruth Polak the owner of costadelsol-vacationrentals.com” target=”_blank costadelsol-vacationrentals.com
A web site specializing in holiday villas and apartments on the Costa
del Sol and in Rural Andalucia. You will also find lots of information
about Spain and Andalucia, in particular.
A holiday package is a one-stop solution for all your traveling woes. If you are a bad organizer or not a very experienced traveler, booking a holiday package that takes care of your travel, accommodation and site-seeing trips is the safe and easiest way of exploring a new place like Italy, whose attractions are countless.
Italy being one of the most popular tourist destinations, air tickets and hotels are always in great demand. You may have to book well in advance to get competitive prices. Since the holiday package services operate on a large scale you’ll be able to buy tickets and accommodations much cheaper. Since Italy is a non-English speaking country, an English-speaking representative can be of great help.
Probably no other country in Europe has as many places of interest as Italy. Unless you plan your itinerary carefully, you may not be able to visit all the interesting places. A packaged tour will arrange for a systematic visit of all the important places in the shortest possible time. Some packages offer a short three-day trip covering the most popular places, and some offer extended trips ranging from 10-15 days. In addition to the sight-seeing trips, many packages arrange various in-house entertainment programs at the accommodation.
There are two ways of booking a holiday package to Italy. You can book one at home, or reach Rome or other important cities like Milan or Florence and book a local package. In fact, you can book several local packages of short duration to different destinations. There’s no way of saying what the better choice is. You should decide which option suits you the best.
In either case, packages differ depending on the number of days of stay, your budget, visiting places and mode of travel. Different packages are offered for families, and art, adventure and food lovers. There are special honeymoon and anniversary packages with romantic gondola rides in Venice, and accommodations in castles and vineyards.
Choosing the right time to travel is also important. Packages are priced differently during peak season and off-season. Hotels in Rome charge more during Christmas, New Year’s, Easter and during other religious occasions. Prices are lower during the fall and early spring, but the weather can be a bit cooler. But this is the best time to book your package if you want to enjoy low prices and face fewer crowds.
Browse through the websites and brochures of various packages to zero down on the most competitive one.
e-ItalyVacations.com Italy Vacations provides detailed information on Italy Vacations, Italy Vacation Rentals, Italy Vacation Packages, Italy Vacation Travels and more. Italy Vacations is affiliated with e-PalmSpringsVacationRentals.com Palm Springs Condo Rentals.
The charisma and aura of the European country Scotland is unknown to none. It is the land, which was a surface to numerous significant historical battles, is the mother of cherished sport ‘golf’ and is globally appreciated for its Balmoral Castle (a vacation spot for Queen Elizabeth and her family) and Scotch whisky. Scotland is blessed with a rich history, culture and scenic splendor. It is one amongst the most admired places on the globe today. Geographically, Scotland is bifurcated into three regions- Southern Uplands, Central Lowlands and Highlands. These regions adjoin different places and comprise of different landforms for instance by way of river valleys the Southern Uplands act as a link between the country’s central plain and England border.
The Scotland Activities
• Since time memorial golf is an immensely crucial activity in Scotland. Infact the golf sport originated from this very European country. The Highlands region of Scotland nestles some of the prominent golf courses in the world. There are around 540 golf courses in Scotland. These are variously scattered in Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Historic Heartland and Central areas of Scotland.
• Cycling and bike riding is another cherished pastime in Scotland. The enthusiasm for cycling is such that many tourists hire bikes to explore this divinely beautiful place. The Glencoe, Galloway region and the Isle of Skye are perfect spectacular riding places.
• The exclusive Scotland attractions are the Heavy and Light Athletics. Heavy Athletics includes games that demand muscle. These games are stone, weight and hammer throwing, sheaf tossing and so forth. Dancing, sprinting, running and jumping are the light athletics sports that basically require an impregnable stamina.
City Look
The capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh is a perfect blend of contemporary and archaic Scotland. The traditional Scotland is reflected from the ancient Edinburgh castles and buildings. While the marvelously constructed hotels, restaurants and thrilling nightlife are the emblems of present-day Scotland. Edinburgh is swarming with people every year for more than one reason. The foremost attractions are the museums of this place. The Royal Museum that houses the first cloned sheep named Dolly, the National Gallery of Scotland along with quite a few national museums are paradigmatic cases in point. Next there are the famous Edinburgh castle, the Royal Mile Street that conjoins this castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the garden of medicinal plants i.e. the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Princes Street, worldwide famous for shopping.
If you want to experience the mind-boggling Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet, the city of Glasgow is a place ideal for that. Apart from being a home for some of the most noteworthy Scot museums such as St. Mungo Museum Religious Life, the largely acclaimed Museum of Transport and the Scotland Street School Museum; Glasgow is endowed with ample of other lures to woo its visitors. For instance there are primitive constructions like The Pollock House, the Country Black, the Glasgow Cathedral and the Bothwel Castle. These places hold immense significance not just as tokens of an abundant history but also in incurring tourist wealth. Not to forget are Glasgow’s eminent pedestrian shopping streets- Sauchiehall Street, Buchanan Street etc.
Some nitty-gritties
The best feature of Scotland is an easy access to it. Americans can throng this place without any passport. April to September are the ideal months to visit Scotland. So make sure that you get your reservations done beforehand. Scotland does not accept Euro currency. The visitors must get it exchanged prior to their visit.
Mansi aggarwal writes about scotland travel . Learn more at scotlandtraveltips.com scotlandtraveltips.com
Here in Greece, my friend and I have been making little orgone generators to try to improve the energy field around our house, because there is so much electromagnetic radiation coming from the cell phone towers and the military, making people sick. These orgone cones are quite easy to make if you have quartz crystals — and we do — and after I had made a few I started “distributing” them around to the tower sites within a 3 or 4 km radius of our house. I used a pendulum to help me find the right spots to leave the generators (also known as Holy Hand Grenades, named by Don Croft who devised the method I am following) — the first few times, I was impressed at how helpful the pendulum was at directing me to places which turned out to be perfect, and which I could not have found on my own. We also have noticed a major decrease in the negative energy we are feeling, and since we started doing this the whole area seems to be changing — it’s hard to say if this is really happening, but it just seems that things are more harmonious, and nature is looking more and more beautiful.
So last week, I suddenly felt the urge to visit Samothrace, a 2-3 hour ferry ride from Lemnos. Themis tried to discourage me, by telling me that there is a lot of black magic on that island. He mentioned reports that members of the British Royal Family are frequent visitors to certain sites on the island, where they participate in secret rituals. My intuition still kept telling me to go, and to bring along one of our orgone generators and plant it there, to improve the energy and foil the dark schemes of Charles and Camilla…
So on Saturday at 6:30 am I took the ferry, and after a very gloomy voyage through fog, landed in the port of Samothrace where the sun finally appeared. The sea was throwing off sparks unlike any I have ever seen before. It seemed the whole island was shimmering with energy and light.
Once off the boat, though, it was just another typical Greek island, with bars and cafes and men sitting around drinking coffee. I had not done any research, so I bought a guide book in one of the shops and quickly read about the ancient mystery site on the north coast of the island, a mere 11 km. from the port. I found a bike rental place, rented an old clunker for $6, and took off pedalling along the coastal road in the direction of the ruined temple of the “Great Gods.”
The sites on the north coast of Samotrace were used by a mystery cult which was second only to the one at Eleusis, involving the goddesses Demeter, Athena and Cybele (Artemis or Diana), with Hades (Pluto) and Persephone in there somewhere. There’s a ruined temple, and various circular ruins where initiations were enacted.
It took me about half an hour to reach the archaeological sites, but for some reason were all locked up and the entire mountainside was enclosed behind high fences. It was only 10:30 a.m., and I figured all I had to do was get somewhere near the place where the Royal Family held its rituals. So I kept on cycling, enjoying the beautiful weather and the waves crashing on the beach.
I came to a forested area which seemed to be heavily populated by black goats peering from the hillside as I pedalled past. Normally in Greece I like to be around goats, but these were a different breed, and it seemed very creepy that they should be showing up on the way to an ancient mystery site of animal sacrifice. The guidebook didn’t say anything about human sacrifice, so I was thinking “I will let the pendulum guide me to an appropriate spot on a mountainside, perhaps overlooking one of the ruins.” I specifically asked to be taken to the spot used for rituals by the Prince of Wales and his sweetheart. I visualized some hilly area in the open, with lots of old stones baking in the sun, but really I had no idea where I was headed or what I would find.
At some point I stopped to check again, and the pendulum told me to continue on down the main road for another 260 meters. I walked the bike so as to pace it out exactly. At 200 meters, I came to a shaded roadside picnic-type area with a rushing spring. I asked the pendulum if I could drink the water as I had forgotten to bring any. It said no, continue on for 60 – 70 more meters.
The north side of Samothrace is relatively lush, and has sulphurous hot springs in the mountains. I was approaching this wild area, where there are lots of very spooky-looking “plane trees” which can grow very big and twisted and often have hollowed-out centres, and some of them look almost human like the Ents in Lord of the Rings.
At 60 meters, the 2-meter high wire fence (preventing people reaching the ruins illegally by circling back through the forest) suddenly dipped to less than half a meter, and I was looking up at a sandy cliff, about 5 metres high, covered with trees and brush. I noticed there was a very narrow path, possibly a goat track, winding upward from the bottom. It was easy to step over the fence, hide my bike behind a bush, and then I climbed to the top of the sandy bluff, being careful to grab onto bushes and not slip off the edge.
Up above was the forest. I was now standing in a small clearing, with lots of wide, low bushes that spread in circles along the ground like large clumps of ferns. The pendulum told me to hang a right, although this meant walking into some taller, dead bushes with spreading branches that blocked the path in all directions. The pendulum insisted that I get past these dead bushes and into another spot where there were some very large trees. With each step I took, branches were snapping loudly, and it occurred to me these bushes were there as a barrier, i.e. no way an intruder could forward without making a racket and sending a warning to whoever might be gathered in the space ahead.
It was 11 a.m., broad daylight, and there was no one to hear me as I crashed through and found myself in a deserted grove which I immediately recognized as the site of something really awful. There were three large boulders on the ground set in a semi-circle, one of them rectangular and very flat and smooth, another one round, and another taller more irregular at the far edge of the thicket.
These large stones stood facing two huge hollowed trees which guarded the cliff edge. Both trees had their backs to the sea, and were shaped just like human beings with upraised arms, and the hollowed out part of each tree was large enough to hold a fully grown adult. It was impossible to look at them without imagining someone being tied to them. On the ground near the boulders were two round pits which had been recently filled with twigs and leaves, neatly arranged.
I have never seen or felt anything like the place where I was standing, clearly the site of something awful. It also felt ancient, like a space designed by nature for a twisted purpose, not nature as we know it, but something Gothic, almost alien. I’ve seen similar places in the woods England, and also Louisiana, but never before in Greece. The trees might have been 100 years old, but maybe more. The three boulders could have been brought in from the archaeological site. The square flat stone definitely looked like it was designed for ritual slaughter — maybe the twin fire pits were for roasting organs and entrails! My imagination was running a bit wild but there was a horrible vibration in this clearing. I had been guided to this spot in the midst of a forest overlooking a road which was used mainly for ordinary rural traffic — and what little tourism there is on Samotrace — but whatever happened in this grove was not for tourists.
Not only was the space defended on all sides by thick circular bushes, and invisible from the road because it was perched on a fenced-off cliff — the likelihood of coming across it by accident while tramping illegally through the forest was virtually nil — but even if you lost and crazy enough to stumble onto it, you might not notice what sort of place it was. You would have to be led there, or you would never find it.
I was taking all this in, breaking out in a cold sweat, wondering where I should put my Holy Hand Grenade so I could get out of there. Just then, I heard something go “Baaaah” from right nearby and nearly jumped out of my skin. About 10 metres away at the edge of the clearing, a white long-horned goat stood watching. Up to that moment, there had been a frozen silence. Next, a bird suddenly made a very disturbing, broken-up noise from one of the treetops. I felt surrounded by fearful animals who had witnessed something here and were waiting.
I started desperately looking around for an obvious place to leave my orgone contraption. There were several possible spots: I went to the tree, but the pendulum said no, not there. It directed me to the farthest of the three boulders where there was a space with loose dirt and small stones — a good place to bury a small object, which I did, in about two seconds. Another birdcall came from overhead – I recognized the pigeon that the Greeks call “Dekaocturo” because it makes a soothing sound like “Dekaocturo” which means number 18. This seemed to be the all-clear signal because then other birds started singing, and I could feel the fear dissipating.
I backed away and stumbled through the crackling bushes, breaking lots of branches in my hurry to leave. I looked down from the top of the bluff, saw the road and then saw my bike still down in the gully. Getting back down the crumbling sandy path seemed a lot harder than coming up, but before I had time to think, the rocks and gravel simply gave way and I slid all the way to the flowing stream at the bottom. What a relief to get out of there fast, without any scratches.
I jumped on the bike and pedaled as fast as I could along the road till I came to another picnic spot, also totally deserted, and stopped to catch my breath. It was 11:30 a.m. I was in a state of total amazement that all this had happened, and what did it mean? On the way back to the port, I saw only one black goat. It was kneeling by the roadside. This also seemed weird at the time. I had never seen a goat do that before. It seemed to be saying, Hats off to you, Lady, and thanks for dropping by. I wondered if some of those wild black goats are actually human victims trapped in animal bodies.
When I got back to the port, I had a swim near a little roadside chapel dedicated to St. John. For the rest of the day, I did healthy, tourist-y things, such as climb Mount Saos in the scorching sun, arriving half-dead at 3 pm in the beautiful village of Chora which hangs off a mountainside, where I had lunch. For that hour or two it was like being in heaven, and I partly forgot about the Satanic grove by the sea. In general, Samothrace seemed like a wonderful, unspoiled place, full of lovely people — except for one local man who sat near me in a cafe, who acted bizarrely, inviting a passerby to play cards with him and then cheating — he wasn’t drunk but his speech was slurred and he wore this permanent smirk — later it occurred to me he might be “possessed.” The locals treated him with caution although the waiter told him off after he apparently blurted out something obscene in Greek and scared away an older lady.
The pendulum continued giving me good, accurate directions for the rest of the afternoon: predicting where I would eat lunch, and the reliability of my rented bike, and several other little “tests” that proved it does work. It told me not to visit the sulphurous springs, and also not to try to eat lunch in the village on the south side of the island which has a miracle chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary — which I later found out was mainly empty and deserted.
So I feel certain that place really is connected to the British Royal Family. I asked to be guided to the site of their secret rituals — imagining this would lead me to the entrance to some archaeological relic, or maybe a lodge in the hills with sunburned people lawn-bowling then sneaking off at night to some tacky ceremony with torches and silly costumes. I certainly never imagined I would end up in the epicentre of evil.
I hope I don’t sound hysterical! I have no doubts about the meaning and purpose of what I saw.
I got back to Lemnos on the boat at 10 pm, exhausted. Themis and I went out to a taverna and I told him all about my strange adventure. He’s never really surprised by anything, so he just said to be careful, as I could “lose power” if I keep this up.
The next day, the energy was a little crazy. We went picking mulberries and Themis had a flat tire. Later, I dreamed about Samothrace and being at the Church of the Virgin Mary in the village of Chora, and everywhere were bright, pink flowers. I also dreamed someone handed me a sealed, thick glass container filled with creepy, crawly centipedes and other poisonous creatures — they were visible inside, but could not get out. And I hope this is a metaphor for the future: that these dark secrets will be known, but not unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
Today I’m writing this — later, I’m going to make 2-3 more orgone generators. They clear away negative energy, which I am noticing more and more. They work in spirals. When placed in areas where there is a lot of negative, or even Satanic, activity, they first neutralize the area and then they turn it to positive.
“Buckingham Palace” came up in a couple of remote viewing sessions, as the source of the secret experiments on children and others. I did not try to “remote view” the scene in the grove last night, although I was tempted. Instead I asked for protection and fell asleep. Around midnight, in the opening moments of 06.06.06, I suddenly felt a strong jolt of energy which woke me up. I have no idea what that was — it was a bit like a gun going off in my head. I’m just hoping the Holy Hand Grenade in the Glade had a dampening effect on the proceedings.
And that Charles and Camilla had a nice weekend, lawn-bowling,
