A brief visit to Valencia, baking under the August sky. Like most cities in southern Europe, this is the month when you feel the party is going on somewhere else, but the great benefit of that is that you can wander round quiet streets and find room to sit in cafes and enjoy the favourite pastime of watching other people.
The market is a paradise of fish and fruit and vegetables, and we eat little figs, stuffed with goat cheese, wrapped in jamon iberico.
The river which used to run through the city was diverted by Franco, and the wide bed is now a park with football pitches, cycle lanes, playgrounds and groves of kapok trees. They are sculpturally exquisite, with large pink flowers which turn to balls of fluff, but their trunks are covered in sharp black thorns.
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