What I did on my holiday

I've just got back from three weeks on holiday in Andalucia. Two things I learnt:

Trenhotel good. If you don't dilly-dally, you can eat lunch in London one day, and in Seville the next, without leaving the ground. The overnight journey, from Paris to Madrid, is comfy and fun (cf flying) – there's a bar and restaurant on the train. The mighty seat61.com has all the details.

Plasticultura bad. When I saw vegetables in my local supermarket from Spain, I had, I suppose, a dim image of a happy campesino weidling a mattock and whistling a song. In fact, it seems that they are grown in one of a never-ending series of plastic greenhouses that, in eastern Andalucia (around Almeria) fills just about every bit of land between the sea and the mountains.

There's a danger in knee-jerk disapproval of the unsightly — I'm sure there are outdoor forms of farming that have just as much environmental impact, but, because they fit our idea of what farmland should look like, don't make you as depressed as a sea of plastic. And there are arguments that, where we farm, we should do it as intensively as possible, so that is uses the minimum of land and leaves more for nature (whatever one means by that). (Although in a country like the UK, where farmland and countryside are the same thing, this would be tricky.) Plasticultura, or invernaderos, however, do seem to take out more water, and put back more nitrates, than the land can support. Plus they are hellish places to work (although not so hellish that no one wants to work there).

To find out more, try this article from the Ecologist for more on water, the environment and farming in southern Spain, this from John Vidal on the Spanish drought, this lecture by Felicity Lawrence for intensive farming in general, and here (recommended) for photos of plasticultura farming.

I shan't be buying Spainsh veg any more, thus making my winter diet even more cabbage-based than previously.