RIDE 'EM COWBOY

This is the place where I let my inner child roam free, and it dressed up as a cowboy to protect the ranch from those pesky varmints in bandit country. Texas Hollywood theme park is a collection of old western film sets located in the Tabernas Desert in southern Spain. The area's dramatic scenery has provided the location for many spaghetti westerns and it's still used by film industry today.

I felt as though I was visiting an old town in the Wild West, that had been frozen in time. The buildings and lay out of the streets appear so authentic, that after a few minutes I forgot I was walking around a film set. There's a saloon, jail, gallows, shops and stables, and a couple of times a day a live stunt show with cowboys on horseback.

After lunch in the cantina - the food wasn't bad for a theme park - I found myself in Fort Bravo, a replica of the US Cavalry Fort. Although there really isn't much to do, other than wander in a and out of sets, their scale and attention to detail, allied to the breathtaking rocky desert, made this a truly memorable experience for me.

The only downside was that I wanted to know more about which films the sets had a starring role in. They've been used hundreds of times and I think it would be a good idea for the theme park owners to include some stills and text by each set. After all they've played such an important part in film history.