The next morning we
soon reached Grazalema, a white town set
on a hillside and reputedly the wettest place in Spain so we were lucky
to arrive in warm sunshine. We found
a small carpark in the centre with a sign banning overnight parking
of motorhomes. It is on the tourist trail with several craft and gift
shops. After walking around the narrow streets admiring the
bronze statue of a bull and some colourful house porches (a foretaste of the patios in Córdoba), we set off
north across the hills covered in wild flowers to find a bridge across
the Embalse de Zahara was closed so had to take a long diversion to
reach the main road to Olvera, another Peublo Blanco. Bypassing the
town we took the road to Setenil de la Bodegas set in a steep valley
and famous for cave dwellings, but we found it to be rather scruffy
with
nowhere obvious to park so we headed back towards Olvera stopping at a
shrine at the Ermita Santa Maria de la Remedio for lunch in the scorching
sun.
Ermita Santa Maria de la Remedio near Olvera
We found a new ACSI campsite for the night set on a hilltop a few
kilometres
to the east of Olvera. After using the motorhome service point
(difficult to access and I got soaked from the very high pressure water
tap), we decided
to drive on main roads to Ecija and onto the free autovia to the city
of Córdoba
where the sat nav led us to the busy municipal campsite a couple of
kilometres north of the city centre.
a golden doorway
We arrived in Córdoba in time for the annual Patio Festival fortnight
but there are many other sights worth visiting in the city.
We walked into the centre in the evening to visit some of the patios and caught the bus the next
morning to visit more patios and also the mosque with a
cathedral built into its centre - an interesting mix of Arabic and
Christian cultures.
Córdoba cathedral
The mosque is a UNESCO World
Heritage site as is the whole of the old city centre, centuries ago the
second largest city in Europe, and covers a massive area in the old
centre. The site was originally a Christian church and developed
as a mosque over centuries of Islamic rule. The current Christian
cathedral was built within the
mosque during the Renaissance so there is a
strange juxtaposition of Moorish and ornate Baroque architectural
styles,
symbols and icons. Whilst it doesn't have the grandure of the
Alhambra in Granada we found it a fascinating place to walk around and
it wasn't too crowded. We then walked along the banks of the River
Guadalquivir to the sixteen arched Roman bridge and the remains of old
watermills.
ruined watermill