Wednesday 1 December 2004, Hotel International, Córdoba.
We left Granada on the 9:00 a.m. bus to Córdoba across the vast, empty Sierra Nevada. It was dark as we carried our luggage through the wet, empty backstreets of Granada at 7:30 a.m. to catch the bus to the station, it was also very cold indeed. We left Granada with few regrets; it wasn't the most welcoming of cities. Seville had rather spoilt us. Although Granada's Alhambra was stunning to visit, we had not felt particularly comfortable in Granada. At the station we had 40 minutes before the bus, so really enjoyed a coffee and tomato tostada as breakfast.
The bus was fairly empty and Ian followed the journey with his map. I tried to enjoy the countryside but drifted off to sleep as the endless kilometres of the featureless Sierra Nevada passed by our window. Here and there are dilapidated, crumbling buildings standing by the roadside or back up the hillside, but generally the countryside was completely deserted with neither man nor beast anywhere. Not even a bird could be seen, just brown, grey or yellow scrubland or bare soil with the outline of the higher peaks just visible through swirling torrential rain. From time to time our route would take us through some dilapidated forgotten town, full of steep, wet tiled streets and pavements with a few bars, cafés, garages and so on. The buildings were generally white rendered but severely decayed, with rubbish tips on the outskirts and a few industrial buildings, such as a car body repairer or a fitted kitchen supplier, on the outskirts. I cannot remotely imagine living in such a place.
As we gradually approached Córdoba, the bare hillsides which may have supported a crop of some sort earlier in the year gave way to endless stretches of olive trees. We passed through Baena in the centre of this area with its enormous silos of olive oil towering over the plains of the countryside, lower here than around Granada, and vaguely reminiscent of Dartmoor, but without the beauty. The entire wealth of this area seems to be founded on olive oil. The nearer we got to Córdoba, the more heavily the rain fell. It was falling in torrents as we got off the bus. We felt like moving straight onto somewhere warmer but there were no buses. So we sat drinking coffee until the rain eased sufficiently for Ian to make a dash for the railway station to pick up a map and brief guide. Then we walked a kilometre into town with our luggage.
This hostel we found by chance attached to the Music School, with wind instruments tuning up and practising all day. A delightful young lady welcomed us and explained all we needed to know, amid much laughter, in Spanish. The owner was out but we negotiated a double room with en suite shower loos etc for 32 Euros in what seems a quiet backstreet just off the main shopping area. The shower is down a step and has rounded arches and barrel vaulting, so it feels as it as if we are in an Arab bath house. The lady owner returned. She also speaks no English but is friendly and delightful. She insisted on lending me her umbrella to take with us as we explored the town. For some reason this touched me greatly; she'd never met us before but the gesture like that was spontaneous, warm and friendly. In fact we were very grateful for it, as it poured most of the afternoon and when it rains in Spain it is a constant deluge with water cascading from every rooftop into the narrow cobbled or paved walkways between the tight packed white stuccoed house fronts. At the cathedral we even had a hail storm, with white pebbles bouncing around at the base of the fruiting orange trees filling the paved courtyard of the Arab mosque cum Christian cathedral. This has to count as one of the most strange and beautiful cathedrals we have ever visited. It is probably one of the longest continuously used places of prayer anywhere, having been originally used by the Romans, then Visigoths, then Moors and then the Christians. The Muslim population are now requesting, with every justification I think, that part of the building should returned to them as a place in which they can once again worship. The building beggars description. Yellow stonework outside with its flowering courtyard, separate tower where the minaret once stood, a covered Arab style walkway or cloister surrounding the courtyard and giving wonderful vistas across from every side to the Arab decorations, solid brass metal shutters and keyhole archways. On entering, one walks through an enormous forest of slim Arab columns with reused Roman capitals topped by slender double arches, each built from alternating red brick and white stone. Over 850 of these still remain from the original 1300 or more, and they are stunning. Here the atmosphere of a mosque is overpowering, and Córdoba must have been an astonishing city back in the 9th to 12th centuries when so many Moors gathered together for prayer.
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We exited the city walls and walked down on the outside, admiring the orange stone work the crenelations and the date palms, green and colourful against the walls. We reached the river Guadalquivir; after all the rain this was flowing wide and shallow and water birds were really enjoying themselves. There are several old Arab watermills here, originally used for grinding corn but also to pump up water for the fountains and gardens of the royal palace and other buildings of the town in that wonderful, civilised, cultured period.
We crossed the many arched, pedestrianized Roman Bridge to the far bank of the Guadalquivir river with its square tower, the Torre de la Calahorra, dating from the 14th century and now a museum of Islamic culture.
Next we made our way to the more modern part of the city. It was now dark and paseo time. The town was humming with activity, families out window shopping, and all the shops were busy although it didn't seem just three weeks to Christmas. It is all much more low key here.
We got caught up in a street march for the respect and dignity of teachers. They were all very controlled and dignified but there must have been hundreds of teachers marching, complete with banners.
Thursday 2 December 2004, Hotel International Córdoba.
It will be obvious that I've taken to this city in a way I did not to Granada. That was worth visiting for the Alhambra and the old town but the atmosphere was less agreeable than here. This has the charm as we had felt in Seville, bright, clean, friendly and cultured. Unlike Seville however this is a town of its residence and not just tourists. We spent the whole day wandering the myriads of little calles (streets) and plazas of the old town, peering through enticing doorways to look at pretty paved patios filled with green pot plants, little fountains, climbing plants and citrus trees.
We have discovered Roman remains, art galleries, archaeological museums, palaces and much much more. The little streets are clean, free of graffiti, whitewashed. Where possible, cars struggle and navigate their way through. Restoration work is taking place everywhere. We got talking with a lady who had lived in Australia for a while in her youth and spoke English. She told us the problem with carrying out restoration work was that new discoveries keep being made of even older antiquities. In 1959 a series of huge beautiful Roman mosaics were discovered when a Plaza was relaid. We saw these yesterday displayed in the Palace of the Christian Kings. The lady we met was on her lunch break and told us she had already been home and come out just to walk around her beloved Córdoba. She had lived here for many years and still loved it so much, and kept discovering new corners. She was thinking of buying a little historic house which was for sale - we had been wondering about it when she started chatting. She says it is 500 square meters and costs 200,000 euros. It has a patio and looks charming, facing the old tumbling walls of a far more ancient building across the alley. She took us round to show us the garden of the ruined building, which is beautiful. Then she showed us the birth house of the 16th century Spanish poet Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), currently being restored in his memory. Then she led us to a narrow cobbled alley between the walls of two ancient buildings, telling us it was 2000 years old and had been in use since the time of Jesus Christ. She told us of an event recorded there in 974 which referred to the street already as being over a thousand years old. [Apparently two Cordoban historians, Aben Hayan and Ambrosio de Morales claim that in the year 974 Gonzalo Gustioz Lord of Salas was imprisoned in the Casa de las Cabezas in this street and that the heads of his children, the seven infants of Lara, killed in the fields of Soria, were exposed on the arches that cross the street.] Finally she led us to the lovely archaeological museum where she left us, saying she hoped we enjoyed our visit and told us how to find further wonders of her beloved city. She was so charming, just wanting us to get some of the pleasure from her home city that she had always enjoyed with no ulterior motive.
Later this afternoon we visited the patios of the Palacio de Viana, thirteen little patios or courtyards that even in December are breath-taking in their display of colour. Citrus trees bear their Christmas baubles of bright fruit, symmetrically cut box hedges line the black and white cobbles that form the patterned walkways around the walled gardens. The sound of water is everywhere. Walls are whitewashed and are covered with climbing plants: blooming purple and scarlet bougainvillea, mauve Cape leadwort, celestines, wisteria, climbing roses. There are decorative wells and marble fountains, date palms, cypress trees, oleanders, ivy, even a massive 400 year old holm oak. Pot plants hang from the walls and borders are filled with geraniums. In summer beds are filled with begonias but now they had been filled with pots of lilies aspidistras and tradescantia. Each garden added to the delight of the previous so that they are now all merged in memory into a single superb experience, a harmony between man and nature, magnificent but on a realistic scale, small patios and courtyards rather than grand palace gardens.
Also free for EU citizens was the Archaeological Museum housed in a former Renaissance palace on the Plaza Jeronimo Paez. It showed the depth of history in Córdoba and its region, extending to the pre-roman Iberian culture with its endearing sculptures of lions, and various rock paintings. The Roman remains form the main part of the Museum and reveal what a rich settlement it must have been. Elaborately carved capitals, column bases, inscriptions and sculptures fill the galleries and the outdoor courtyard. There are even the curved steps forming a public area adjacent to the theatre preserved in situ beneath the foundations. Many of the inscriptions are in the less formal rustic style also found in manuscripts, a reflection of the highly developed literacy of a culture that produced Seneca and Lucan, both born in Roman Córdoba. There were also more private remains, including beautiful glassware. There are also remains of the Visigothic and Islamic periods including capitals and inscriptions on large earthenware containers of the type used for plants in patio gardens. We had the whole place almost to ourselves, not even the noisy group of red uniformed school children we had picked our way around in the art gallery were there.
After further wandering around the streets we made our way back to the Hostal International for some wine and to write up the diary, then decided to test out the route to the railway or bus station. Once there, we inquired about trains to Ronda or Algeciras and found one convenient through train at 10:24. We were told that reserved tickets were essential, so went across to the advance booking counter. A strict queueing system operated and we pulled ticket 333 when they were serving 278. After about half an hour spent wandering the station with its inevitable shops such as Tie Rack, our turn was almost up when Ian discovered an automatic ticket machine which informed us that the train was full. We almost left there and then to buy a coach ticket to Málaga but decided to wait our turn. The ticket seller bashed at the keyboard and came up with the same result, no tickets for tourists or even as baggage. He continued to pound the keyboard and then began feeding a series of tickets into the printer. What he had done was to issue two sets of reservations for the sections of the journey either side of Bobadilla, where many people changed trains. We had two seats together non-smoking and did not even have to move carriages. We came away not over impressed at Spanish railways, but extremely impressed that the trouble staff went to circumvent the system.
We returned along streets now lit brightly with Christmas decorations through a marquee at least 100 meters long lined with stalls selling Christmas tat and had a reasonable meal as the only customers in a friendly restaurant on the Plaza Tendrillos, despite the active efforts of the waiters to entice in other passers by. How do they survive?
Friday 3 December 2005, Hotel Andalucia, Ronda, next to the station.
We left Córdoba after breakfasting our room. The lateral thinking of the nice railway official worked perfectly. We simply changed seats at Bobadilla for others in our carriage, no need to move our luggage, and continued onto Ronda. We have since learned that the problem of no seats was caused by a strike by Renfe (Spanish railways) staff cancelling many trains, especially the cheap ones, as every train charges a different price. The journey from Córdoba to Bobadillo was boring in the extreme; there is really nothing to see in the bare Spanish countryside in December. The earth is completely bare with no hedges or wildlife as far as the eye can see. Hillsides were swathed in low cloud and the rain fell steadily. From time to time we would pass a couple of kilometres from an isolated little town with no station of its own. The lines are generally single track and the trains move very slowly; it took three hours from Córdoba to Ronda but it is not really very far at all, less than 120 miles. Because of the terrain, linking towns is far from easy.
The “pueblo blanco” or white towns are just that; usually they are on a rise in the plain and resemble piles of scattered newspapers when seen across the bare orange-brown earth as a tumbling pile of white sheets piled on top of each other. They also resemble a giant version of the rubbish tips that surround them, where the entire rubbish of the town is dumped on the plain outside the villages and lift to rot, which it doesn't do. There are always heaps of old tyres, abandoned vehicle dumps and so on adorning the outskirts of every town. Where does the third world end and the second world begin? Yet within the town the streets are generally well maintained and clean.
Beyond Bobadilla the scenery changes dramatically, the flat empty plains being replaced by endless hectares of olives with refineries scattered on the plains, and vineyards also began to appear. The train climbed steadily into the mountains with steep bends on the narrow single track. Sheep and cattle started to be seen, rocks and crags with goats, and beyond the mountains rising black in the distance against the dark rain soaked sky. Ian says that this is the wettest area in Spain, and I'm not in the least surprised.
At first the landscape was vaguely like Dartmoor, but where we would have copses of woodland there were olive trees. Then the limestone crags and massive rock outcrops changed the nature of the landscape completely, with huge towering crags and snow-topped mountains on the horizon.
Eventually we reached Ronda and we got off the train, which continued to Algeciras to connect with the ferry for Tangiers. The rain was falling in torrents and the station some way from the town centre. We had no idea of our way around and no map. So much for my jokes about finding a welcome in the hillside as we visited the Ronda Valley. As we left the station we saw this hotel and hammered on the door. We are paying 36 euros a night for a huge three-bedded room and very smart bathroom. We have also got a TV and much needed central heating. It is all tiled in white marble, the bedroom too, so it feels as if we are sleeping in a bathroom. Leaving our luggage, we paddled our way down into town and quickly discovered the most impressive feature, the bridge across the incredibly steep gorge linking the old hilltop city with its more recent shopping and residential area.
Unfortunately the streets simply become rivers in the wet, and it has not stopped raining all day. Water falls from rain pipes balconies and gutters directly onto the pavements. Cars splash into gutters and muddy puddles, spraying water onto the narrow, uneven pavements. It is impossible not to be soaked through. I've used my hair dryer this evening to individually dry out the inside of each of our shoes. We wandered the streets of the old town, very like Córdoba but on a generally smaller scale, with pretty squares and gateways giving glimpses of flowering or fruiting greenery in courtyards or patios. There are a few palms here but down in the gorge and out across the plain where the bursting river rushed deciduous trees showed their yellow and scarlet leaves of autumn. It reminded me slightly of Château-Chalon near Lons-le-Saunier in the Jura, but on a far bigger scale. The views down from here were onto olive groves covering the plane rather than vineyards. We have seen evidence of viticulture around here, but only a few small pockets of land turned over to vines. Houses are crammed together up in the hilltop town. Below and on the plain are very a few scattered farmsteads or dilapidated ruins, but generally the open land is deserted. Ronda stands at about 739 meters above sea level, that's about 2,250 feet. We can see snow on the mountaintops around.
We discovered some superb Arab baths down below on the other side of the bridge further down river. This used to be the entrance that to the town, and the baths were a social meeting point around the tenth century. With hot, cold and warm rooms, they worked a bit like the Roman ones but generally there was no immersion except in the cold baths. They were more like steam saunas. They were wonderfully complete, with vaulted roofs set with geometric shapes to allow light to enter. These are probably the most intact Arab baths in Spain and well worth the clamber down the steep stepped path which we shared with the waterfall of waste water from the town that became a river as we neared the bottom. Drains, where they exist, have become clogged by the thick autumn leaves of the walnut trees and other figtree shaped leaves that I didn't recognize. So the water has nowhere else to go downhill except along the cobbled streets.
Back in the town we found a cake shop and café, and drank a hot tea with a tuna and tomato flan - the only savoury things you can buy in Andalucia are ham and cheese or tuna and tomato. We continued our exploration of the town by visiting the local museum with everything from geological specimens, evidence of early settlement, examples of sword manufacture and Muslim tombstones and graves. The building itself is interesting and very Spanish in style, being built around a selection of three sided courtyards the fourth side dropping vertically to the plain below before, affording stunning views from the terraces where, even today, the fountains played and water trickled through canals between the stones.
Although the plains all appear so arid, there are vast underground caverns in this limestone area so there is a permanently high water table to supply the needs of the scattered towns and villages, the olive groves and presumably the tourist resorts on the Costa del Sol. All day we have been inundated by water; never have we had so much flowing water either from nature or design. It began to sound strange in the very few moments when we were actually out of the sound of fountains, bursting rivers, flowing gutters and down pipes or simply hammering raindrops. So it was a very interesting and enjoyable day, if somewhat cold and wet, but that's us on holiday. Padua in 1998 was even wetter, I think.
The English newspaper we picked up in the tourist office says Málaga had a tornado on Wednesday and flooding brought chaos to the city centre. Maybe it washed away some of the domestic debris from the enormous dry torrento Ian and I scrambled along on our visit to the botanical gardens; it doesn't seem possible it could actually flood. As I said, the hostel there is just beneath the huge dam; we wonder if it will still be there when we return on Monday. We bought wine and meagre fare - frankfurters again - and pre-wrapped American bread rolls, no other choice, and returned to our room where we decided it was too wet to go looking for an evening meal so drank all the wine and ate peanuts and cold hot dogs while watching Spanish TV. They have similar adverts to ours and an excellent nature program on the lives of los crocodillos.
Ian as usual is obsessed with maps. Our luggage gets steadily heavier as the accumulates them. Our train journey has a running commentary about every village we are passing and every bend in the track. He has been wondering why so many places are called [Something] de la Frontera. We have discovered that they mark the limit to which the Arabs were forced back from their previous occupation of almost all of Spain except Asturias. This would have been around 1400. Ronda was captured in 1485 and the Moors finally surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella in Granada in 1492.
The Spanish police here look quite intimidating with the amount of hardware they have slung around their belts. Standard issue includes a gun, a huge cosh, a pair of handcuffs and a mobile phone. “Don't mess with us” is their obvious message.
