Travel Tips

This page was inspired by diageva's page on the same subject. Somewhere I have some more pictures which hopfully I will post when I find them.

Essentially to reiterate what Eva's page says:

In Spain one of the sherry manufacturers (Osborne) uses the silhouette of a Black Bull (As in the kind they use for bull-fighting) as its trademark. In order to advertise their product, they got in the habit of producing huge advertising hoardings in the shape of this black bull and placing near the sides of roads. I like these bulls a lot, and they are hugely popular in Spain. BTW, these advertising hoardings are massive.

I'm about 1.85m (6 foot +) and if I jump high, I can just about reach the Bull's Cojones (not that I'm in the habit of doing this sort of thing you understand...)

Anyhow, there got to be a huge amount of pretty tacky roadside advertising in Spain, and the government there decided to ban all advertising on the roadside. Many Spaniards were up in arms at this. How could they lose their Osborne Bulls? So much fuss was made, that the government decided to amend the ban, and decided that advertising hoardings with no words on were OK. The Osborne Bull survived (and lives to fight another day - well okay maybe not).

A popular Spanish road journey game is to count the bulls as you drive along the motorway (especially down in the south where there are more of them).

If you have little idea what I am on about here, there is a Spanish Film with Penelope Cruz (yes more recently as seen on the arm of Tom Cruise) called "Jamon Jamon". As with many Spanish films of this era, the plot bears little relevance to real life, but it is pretty amusing all the same. Warning: This film has a reasonable amount of nudity and questionable morals, so if this isn't your thing don't watch it!

I spotted the bull above as I was driving between Nerja and Torremolinos one evening. The sky was going a brilliant shade of pink, and this picture is not manipulated in any way, that is exactly what was there (well OK, VT appears to have faded the colours a bit, but you get the idea!).

The next bull however I throw open for comment. Can anyone tell me where I took this Bull photo? I will be extremely surprised if anyone can guess! I will post up the answer soon...

OK, to answer the above question, and it was a bit of a trick question. The answer was:

In the back garden of my old house (in England).

If this doesn't sound very believable, check out the attached picture which will hopefully explain everything... I was just playing around with a souvenir I bought on holiday.