25km

It was a bit cloudy for the first time as I set off down the farm track out of town. 



Lots of storks nesting in the church bell towers





Past crosses new and old

arrows leading me to Villanueva Del Duque

where 19th century mining had left it’s mark ( and a white rabbit) 



Lots of granite was also quarried in the area 

and used in door surrounds and lintels

and fencing

and the landscape was dotted with rounded boulders



The open landscape was again given shade and shelter by the holm oaks many of which were obviously centuries old



The sandy track led me through farmland

and I followed the arrows past a stinking goat farm



It’s so dry nothing really rots just dehydrates



A big thing in the area is the devotion to the Virgin de la Guia (?) who has a pilgrimage in her honour and a shrine on the outskirts of Hinojosa 



My last town in Andalusia, tomorrow I’ll be in Extremadura. 



In the Plaza de la Cathedral 

I rang the local police who kindly came and gave me the key to the adjoining albergue which I’m sharing with a policeman stationed here who lives in Córdoba. Well he’s on the night shift so I won’t see much of him. It’s a newly renovated building with all a pilgrim could ask for 

and after showering and doing my washing I studied the poster of all the Caminos still to do 

before retiring to the plaza for lunch. I was here by 1,30 and would have carried on but the next town is 32km away and the bed here is very comfy. I’ve been put off camping by the frosts that greet me every morning and so, with an Albergue to myself for a fiver, why suffer more than need be?

39km

I didn’t stop to camp halfway. The walking was too good. Up in the dawn light and into the empty hills on a good path

With just sheep for company

The path took me over the tree clad hills all day and only crossed one road, only passed about a dozen remote houses and I only heard one chain saw and a couple of cars.

It was the kind of Spanish countryside I love. Rounded hills smothered with trees and scrub and wild flowers. Mixed farmland of holm oak and olive grown in grassland grazed by sheep and cows. The fincas were few and far between and mostly abandoned.

I crossed a few real rivers flowing with clean, clear mountain water and full of loudly mating frogs.

I nearly stepped on a basking snake that jumped as quickly as I did and I saw many many signs of snuffling boars. The markers and signs were plentyful

The vistas changed frequently and the scent of the flowers was heavy on the hot still air.

I’m normally a man who is constantly refering to maps and likes to know where he is in the small, medium and large scale but today I didn’t have a clue. I was in a tiny linear slice of Spain devoid of any relation to the “outside” world.

I could have been anywhere. I could have been in Ireland.

10km/18km/21km

It was midday before I had finished writing in Córdoba and I may be English but I wasn’t about to join the mad dogs out in the sun. It has been getting increasingly hot and I have learnt not to try and exert myself too much or I loose all my body fluids in sweat very quickly. Instead I went for a wander around the city, meandering through the twisting narrow cobbled back streets and peering into the little internal courtyards through any open door. The Cordobans have raised these little spaces to an art form and have associations to support the creation and restoration of “vestibules”. Awards, plaques and prizes are contested. With exquisite tiled floors and walls, lemon or orange trees in huge earthernware pots and a profusion of flowers in every available space they put our hallways to shame. A sideboard, gilt frame mirror and deep pile carpet just doesn’t cut it.

These Spanish towns and cities are so rich in ancient buildings and especially churches I wonder what the Irish urban landscape would have been like given more money and less oppression.

I set off in the early morning as the kids found their way to school down the warren of narrow lanes alongside old men with tiny transistor radios in their top pockets and macho looking men walking little lap dogs. Bars were busy with clusters of talkative smokers outside.

Out of the old city into the suburbs with big blocks of flats, washing hanging from the lines outside their windows, and very soon after passing the old roman bridge, out into the wild.

Here there were men pursuing another popular Spanish pastime, flying remote control planes whilst sheperds herded their flock through the fly tipping zone.

The hills beyond were of uncultivated scrub, holm oak, wild olive, rock rose and cistus, broom and mimosa. And then a familiar smell not enjoyed since the Canaries of pine. The nice rounded tops of the Mediterranean pine. Exposed rock in layers of horizontal strata and yellow arrows everywhere.

I came to an old abandoned railway that was to accompany me ,on and off, for the next few days.

At a little trackside shrine I found some offerings in a tree stump and had a pleasant lunch with the bleating of lambs and the clink clonk of their mothers bells as background music.

The information I’d been given in Malaga included the phone number of a “welcome ” house for pilgrims in the next town Cerro Muriano. This was an unofficial albergue run by a Dutch couple who had been volunteer hospitals row in numerous albergues for a few years and decided to set up on their own. I was given a warm welcome at their rented suburban villa and sat and chatted with them in the outside kitchen. They told me that even North of Córdoba when all three branches of the MOZARABE had joined together there are only about 200 pilgrims a year as opposed to the 2000 a day they were dealing with in the Compostella office in Santiago last summer.

The house, set amongst the pines, is a very relaxing space and after a good sleep I set out armed with Yan’s info on the way ahead. There is a large army camp and firing range to be crossed and then it’s back to the rolling scrubland before coming down to the oak studded grazing land of Guadiato valley.

I was following the old drovers way the Canada Real Soriana and it made for beautiful and easy walking with occasional signs to remind me who I was and where I was going.

The scenery continued wild and pretty all the way into Villaharta where I went to the town hall and organised to stay in the changing room of the sports hall. It’s a 39km stage tomorrow that I may split into two and camp out if I come across somewhere nice.

In the meantime I shall make myself at home on my exercise mat. I just hope there are no late basketball games planned to night.