Route During Week Four

We head off from the Caminito bound for the Pueblos Blancos, the white towns of Andalusia.

These towns enjoy commanding positions on mountainsides and often overlooking gorges, their whiteness stands out in a landscape dominated by pine trees, holm oaks, cork oaks, and, apparently a true botanical rarity, Spanish firs.

We’ve heard good things about Setenil de las Bodegas so we make that our first stop.  We go to a campsite to plug in, do laundry, and muck out Lionel, all glamorous stuff.  The campsite is fine but the floor is compacted sand which gets everywhere!

Setenil is an interesting place set in a gorge with extraordinary buildings that are built into the rock and where the rock of the gorge overhangs some of the streets to act like a roof above them.  The origins of the town are a bit of a mystery but it is thought that the caves were used as shelters in prehistoric times and the blackening of the ‘ceilings’ dates back to then.

We have unknowingly picked a public holiday - Constitution Day - to visit which means it is very busy.  Constitution Day falls on 6th December and celebrates the bringing about of democracy in Spain following the fall of Franco.  This holiday is quickly followed on 8th December by the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and as the dates this year fall on a Wednesday and a Friday, the Spanish have seized the opportunity to make this an extra long weekend.

Maybe it is because it is so busy or maybe it is the drizzle or perhaps a bit of both but Setenil fails to live up to our expectations; it is nice enough and the setting is certainly dramatic but it doesn’t feel as if it has the soul of so many of the places we have visited and loved.

We pressed on to Ronda and to an aire which has great reviews.  It is well organised but is situated on the modern outskirts of Ronda so not scenic and it’s near quite a busy road.  We’ll visit the old town in Ronda tomorrow and hope that for us it works.

The day dawns sunny and bright and everything seems more positive.  The aire we are staying in is very well thought out with everything we need and the walk into the old town of Ronda is fine.  We are both really surprised by how big Ronda is, it has a big modern part to it which has a nice feel, a big pedestrianized shopping area, and then the old town.

We visit the bullring which is an impressive building, very similar to what a Roman arena would have been like we think.  It is interesting but it’s hard to forget the beautiful, majestic bulls who meet their end here in the most brutal of ways. 

Of course, we also go to have a look at the famous bridge which is extremely high and also beautiful but there are hordes of people there which inevitably detracts from the atmosphere.

Of Setenil and Ronda, we feel Ronda has managed to retain more of its identity as a working town as well as a tourist destination and so of the two we prefer it.  

Next stop Jerez de la Frontera. On the drive from Ronda, the mountains gradually fade into the background to be replaced initially with rolling, green hills, and eventually, as the descent towards the coast begins, they disappear entirely, they have been with us throughout this trip and their absence feels like a loss.

We hadn’t planned to visit Jerez but change our plans at the last minute and go there instead of Cadiz.  We both still very much want to visit Cadiz and hope to do that on our return from Morocco.  Having previously said that we prefer more rural environments we both immediately and irrevocably fell in love with this city. 

It is vibrant, really beautiful with a friendly atmosphere. We’ll never cease to be charmed by streets lined with orange trees laden with fruit or by statuesque palm trees, it feels so exotic, so decadent somehow, we love it. 

We go to a bar on our first evening to eat tapas, drink sherry, and watch flamenco. It is a real locals’ bar and feels truly authentic rather than a tourist honey pot.  The performance takes place on a small stage cum platform and consists of a guitarist, a singer, and a dancer, the stage is brightly lit and it is all a bit spit and sawdust, our hopes aren’t that high. 

Then the performance starts and we are completely caught up in the drama and passion that is flamenco, it is so moving Janette is crying!

The next day, we are booked in for a tour of one of the sherry bodegas.  We had hoped to go to one of the smaller operations but it didn’t work out so we went to Gonzalez Byass which has the benefit of producing Tio Pepe which is Janette’s favorite sherry. 

As it’s a bank holiday in Spain it is pretty busy but our guide is engaging and informative and the tour is very interesting.  There is no stinting on the tasting at the end either, which consists of four big glasses each of a different sherry and we are squiffy enough to try a glass of thirty-year-old sherry that someone else had been wasteful enough to leave behind!

We both feel that Jerez is a place we’d like to return to and explore in more depth; we’re so pleased we changed our plans and came here.

No sign of the mountains today except one, brief glimpse far off to the east as we leave Jerez on the Seville road, otherwise the terrain is flat as far as the eye can see and remains that way as we head towards El Rocio.

El Rocio is a true one-off; its roads are sand not tarmac and the horse is the main means of transport.  The village is like something from the Wild West, houses have wide verandas and there are tethering posts for horses outside.  

The Hermitage of El Rocio is home to the Virgen del Rocio, the icon that is the focus of the pilgrimage, the Romeria de El Rocio, which begins on the Sunday before Pentecost and culminates on the second day of Pentecost.  The pilgrims come from all over Spain and abroad and follow one of several pilgrimage routes (caminos), usually they travel on foot, by horseback, or in a horse-drawn cart and they wear traditional costumes and sleep under the stars.  About a million people make this pilgrimage every year.

We aren’t here at the right time of year to witness the pilgrimage but as it is a public holiday weekend it is lively with many people gathered and riding about on horseback or in horse-drawn carriages as well as a motorbike convention going on in the centre of town, there is a real carnival atmosphere. 

El Rocio and its lagoon are at the gateway to Donana National Park, one of the most important wetland areas in the world, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among the many species of plant and animal life to be found here are the Iberian Lynx, the Spanish Imperial Eagle, and the White-Headed Duck.

Tomorrow we head off for Tavira in Portugal, having thoroughly enjoyed our time in Spain.