O fortuna...

Another station. Another cafe with a playlist that alternates Hotel California and a surprising number of other songs from my youth with a more recent crop of songs that are mostly made of four falling notes, repeated, endlessly for three minutes.

As my backpack and I arrive at each moving-on station, I feel a faint twinge of fondness for the place I'm abandoning before I've got to know it and a stronger surge of excitement for the unknown ahead. NorthnExposure said that in order to appreciate flamenco I needed to find my inner gitane. I don't think I have one but, somehow, something of the nomad has entered my bloodstream.

I focused my eyes way beyond the train window, trying to turn its streaks into bokeh. The rolling prairie of dry grass, dry stone walls and boulders made me think of a some future climate-changed Northumbria. The occasional pools with sky-coloured water or hoof-trodden mud or both, reminded me of pictures I've seen of savannah pools in Southern Africa. The one with a stork at its edge had me looking for telephone poles and yes, oh joy!, more inhabited storks' nests perched above the humming wires!

By the time I reached Madrid I took a detour south - a bit like needing to go back down the mountain for a bit when the air gets thin - to Toledo, 40 minutes away. Well, I couldn't miss the old capital of Spain, could I?

I don't think I have a gift for arriving in places when a festival is going on; I just think Spain goes in for festivals. But I have unwittingly got to Toledo two days before its biggest festival of the year, Corpus Christi, which has been happening every year since 1418. I'll be on  a train out at its climax on Thursday but I have two days to enjoy the preparations. So this is why it was so hard to find an affordable second night here when I decided a few days ago to come. It never occurred to me to google 'events Toledo'.

I watched the decorations going up: long streamers of twisted leaves slung from one elaborate basket of flowers to the next and lanterns suspended above the streets. Cloths of all sorts hung from the front of buildings - embroideries faded to pastel celebrating each Latin American country along the front of the Santa Cruz Museum, appliqués illustrating bible stories, red velvet banners and Spanish flags everywhere. Every year the cathedral gets out its eight of its huge 17th century Flemish tapestries and hangs them on the inside walls. Outside churches, ancient cloths from the guilds of weavers and silk-makers are hung but everyone joins in - on balcony after balcony, people have draped their flamenco shawls. 

People have lined the streets with chairs chained together (extra) ready for Thursday's procession.

To add to the festivities, there is a patio festival, a bit like Open Doors in the UK, where people and organisations with patios worth seeing open them up between 6 and 10 each evening. The tourist office gave me a map and I followed the numbers on my way round - as good a way as any for me to discover this city randomly, since many are behind doors on streets I wouldn't otherwise have given a second glance. I envy those who live in rooms or flats which open onto galleries and staircases around a communal patio, especially those with Medujar tiles, a water basin in the middle and lush plants in huge terra cotta pots. I was astounded by one house which has been built into the hill and which has a stone grotto as one side of its courtyard. 

Programme in hand, I arrived in the small patio of the Architecture School at 7.31 for a 7.30 concert and took the second-to-last of 15 seats for a concert by students from Toledo's School of Music and Creativity. By 8.20 there were  people sitting on steps and on the floor, and leaning on walls with more coming in, but the concert still hadn't started, though there were 17 people with guitars strumming and playing varied tunes all at the same time.

At 8.35 someone picked up a microphone to kick off the evening. Then he handed out the playlist to the guitarists. A newly arrived singer was clapped by the guitarists, did a sound check and the concert finally started at 8.45. After three pieces I'd heard enough, offered my seat to someone standing and left.

What timing! As I went into the street, I heard a band. I chased it down the road and saw a procession with what looked remarkably like a Blessed Virgin Mary held aloft. For the next 90 minutes I wove in and out of the procession followers, watching the float (a litter, rather than on wheels) being carried by six, or seven or eight or nine people dressed as men, followed by three priests in layers of lace and brocade, followed by a band. Bystanders held candles and people on balconies above dropped petals. The carriers changed places from time to time as they manoeuvred the float and themselves safely though narrow streets (extra) until they came to the square, rosemary sprigs strewn all over the ground, outside a church where three girls in long white dresses were waiting. There, lots more people helped with the float and began a strange ritual of seeming to try to get it though the church arch facing backwards. Forwards into the crowd one way, backwards to the arch, forwards another way, backwards to the arch. Every now and then the band stopped mid-bar, a woman shouted 'Viva La Maria', and everyone shouted back 'Viva'. When the float eventually went through the arch there was cheering and clapping, the followers all went in for plastic cups of wine and I tried to work out where the procession had taken me so I could get back to my room for the night.