Two hundred plus kilometres from Almería to Granada on the fabled Camino Mozarábe. An afternoon in Granada; a visit to the Alhambra, the sultan’s heavenly palace and the gardens of the Generalife. Built on the ruins of a Roman fortress in the 13th century by the Nazari dynasty (the last Arab Caliphate in Iberia) its architecture, its blue, red and golden interiors, its courtyards of roses and orange trees, its fountains and its history of political and romantic intrigue are beguiling.
Granada to Córdoba (171 km)
After a string of quiet evenings in small villages, the pleasure of a nightcap at a lively, urbane bar. A slow morning, sitting in the pale sunlight and savouring a churros con chocolate before putting on our packs and heading off in a northwesterly direction. We hear someone call our names; it’s Paco, our compañero, and his friend, a Jesuit priest. Paco is familiarising himself with the route he’ll take out of Granada tomorrow. A chat, a hug, another hasta luego. On through outer suburbs and parklands, past green fields of canola and beans. A heron, a dusky yellow bird, flocks of swallows. Saturday speedsters on the bicycle track alongside the river. Water rushing past abandoned factories and an old railway line. On towards Pinos Puente, childhood home of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish poet and dramatist who was executed by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War.
At the Hotel Montserrat, we wonder if we have strayed onto the set of an Almodóvar film. A throng of people drinking, eating and talking incessantly. Men in slick suits; women with bright red lipstick, tight trousers and stilettos. Impeccably dressed children riding their scooters kamikaze-like through the crowded dining room. Free tapas that look and taste like a Michelin restaurant entrée. At four in the morning, the wedding party is still celebrating. Three hours later the bar is crowded again, most of its patrons downing two shots of black coffee and a shot of liquor; the breakfast of champions.
A morning bright with birdsong and wildflowers. We follow a canal out of town and walk on through ploughed land to the Velillos River. Fording the swift-flowing, waist-high river and arriving on the other side cold and muddy. A farm with its own chapel, another of Roman origin, Sunday farmers tending to the orchards and vegetable gardens of their now unlived-in childhood homes. Sacred singing coming from a church in Los Olivares.
Into the hills, climbing steeply up to the fortress town of Moclín. It is like time travelling. There are neolithic cave paintings, prehistoric dolmen tombs and a Mozarabic necropolis with tombs hollowed in the rock nearby. Two walled enclaves of the 13th-century stone fort built for the defence of the Nazari Caliphate are still standing and include the remains of a citadel, a cistern and the Catholic church of Cristo del Pano. The church, famous for its large canvas of Christ given to the village by the Catholic monarchs in the 15th century, became the focus of an annual pilgrimage when a sacristan miraculously recovered his sight while cleaning the canvas. Moclín was a divided town during the Spanish Civil War. Nationalists and Republicans alike left behind nests of anti-aircraft shelters and a warren of stone trenches.
An evening reunion with Paco at the plaza bar. A morning of promise, despite the storm-bright sky. Moorish citadels high up on the hillside illuminated by golden light. Stone towers built on rocks in ‘no man’s land’ from where the Moors watched for strangers. Upon seeing them, they sent smoke signals from tower to tower until Granada received the message and ordered the troops to be ready for battle.
No breakfast in Moclín because the only bar is closed on Mondays and no prospect of a coffee for 15 kilometres. Walking on backcountry lanes, across olive plantations and through small villages. Women in blue gingham smocks disappear furtively into houses as we approach. Others, chatting on street corners, acknowledge us as we pass. A goat farmer invites us in for coffee and spends the interval lamenting the precarious lot of a dairy farmer. On past big estates planted with asparagus and alfalfa to the outskirts of a town where dogs snarl at us from behind fortuitously locked gates. The striking 13th-century citadel of Alcalá de Real. Dominating the landscape and still with nine of its original thirteen watchtowers and three of its great gates intact, despite the Christian conquest of 1492 and Napoleon’s troops setting fire to it 400 years later. We should spend the afternoon resting but we can’t resist walking up to the citadel and then, at sunset, climbing the hill opposite it for the splendour of the view.
Over a meal, Paco tells us of his wife’s death from cancer thirteen years ago, when she was only in her 40s and their daughters were teenagers. Paco too has had treatment for cancer. Now he’s determined to live a good life; walking Caminos, travelling, learning new skills, spending time with his daughters and his friends. Yelling loudly whenever his beloved Celta has a game on the TV. Taking it all in. Relishing the time and the place and the company of the people he finds himself with.
Jet trails in the sky over the ancient citadel. The air cold. A Roman bridge leading us to a Roman road. Three pilgrims spread out along the path lost in their own worlds. Magenta, pink and orange tulips a show in the well-tended gardens of the pueblos we walk through. Olive groves abuzz with activity in this, the main olive oil-producing region of Spain.
The soundtrack of early spring mornings in Andalucia; the buzz of chainsaws, birdsong, the tinkling of sheep bells and the lilt of running water. The waymarking has become haphazard since we left Granada. The ‘safe’ passage through the tunnel under the freeway is a raging torrent of water and too dangerous to risk. The track on the other side of the road has been obliterated by a landslide. Qué desastre! The conflicting advice of two smartphone apps, one guidebook and three opinionated pilgrims provides no clarity on the best way forward. Eventually, we regain the route and, more critically, find a bar open in the village of Ventas de Carrizal where we sit in the sun, eat lunch and regain our equilibrium.
Roosters crowing in the afternoon. A donkey on the track refusing to give ground. Corn growing on the river flats. Tractors on the move. Thousands of tadpoles in the pools of water on the track. Hillsides of olive trees set against rugged mountain ranges. Three black crows in a cloudless blue sky. The sun warm. We walk into Alcaudete with its 10th-century stone fort, settle into a hotel and then search for a physiotherapist who might attend to a pilgrim in need. The gracious Jose Torres squeezes us in while also attending to three other patients. He’s very thorough and effective and gives his blessing to Michael continuing the walk.
A fine clear-sky morning. Red poppies, bright in the sunshine. A profusion of wildflowers. Grand whitewashed houses high up on the hill overlooking the valley. Villages off in the distance. The still waters of the Laguna de Salobral, a sanctuary for migratory birds. Past olive farms, solar farms and across the Rio Guadajoz into the Province of Córdoba.
We expected a swell of people on the track once we left Granada but this isn’t the case. Most days we are just three pilgrims walking to Mérida. While Paco has intentions to practise his English, largely we communicate in Spanish, sometimes finding ourselves hard up against the limitations of our language when we try to discuss concepts such as political ideology, national energy policy, etc.
Stopping at a farm to ask for water we’re assaulted by a cacophony of peacocks, geese, donkeys and dogs. A story is told of a peregrina lost in a maze of olive trees during a heatwave last summer and found almost-dead by a farmer. The forecast for the next few days is for heat in from Africa. But there’s shade and, with an early start, the days are almost perfect for walking, unless like Paco you’re from cold, damp Galicia and find temperatures above 25 degrees wearisome.
The sky lightning. Doves cooing. The breeze warm. Fortress hill towns off in the distance. Wild fennel growing alongside the track, the morning scented with aniseed. Farmers on the move. Migrant workers sewing seed in the ploughed fields. An effortless and lovely 20-kilometre walk to Castro del Rio, a pre-Roman town and strategically important in the time of the Caliphate. The houses whitewashed, the gardens bright with flowers, the plazas shady.
We meet a French artist, Michel Cerdan, who, when he was 13, watched a Buñuel film called The Milky Way, a surrealist story of two pilgrims travelling through time on a journey from Paris to Santiago de Compostela. The film stayed with him and when he finished high school in 1977, he walked the then little known and un-waymarked Camino Frances. Now, dismayed by what he sees as the commercialisation of that route, he finds the solitude, wildness and cultural connectedness he is seeking on the Camino Mozarábe. He’s finalising an exhibition, Camino de Piedras (Stone Road), that will open in Castro del Rio in a couple of weeks.
A bus into Córdoba. A decision not easily arrived at but if we walk it’s a 40-kilometre day and Michael is suffering pain from a re-inflamed tendon. Paco decides to throw his lot in with us and catch the bus also. Swallows about. A stork’s nest high up on the facade of a church. More of their higgedly piggedly nests on the tops of pylons. The once rolling plains of wheat now given over to olive plantations. Passing the fortress towns of Espejo and Santa Cruz. Birds of prey whirling in the hazy, spring sky. White herons foraging in the dark fields.
The scent of orange blossom, heady in the streets of Córdoba. The Angelus bells ringing out over the city at midday and, from a hidden mosque, the call to prayer. Up early to wander through the 8th-century Mezquita, the great Friday mosque and, after Mecca, once the second most important place of worship in the Muslim world. It must have shimmered before a Catholic cathedral was built in the middle of it and its 19 doors were closed to the light. Even still, the golden mosaics and forest of red and white striped arched columns are mesmerising and its vast, calm space deeply contemplative.
A Saturday as wistful as any Sunday. Paco doesn’t visit the Mezquita because the memory of visiting it with his wife will reduce him to tears. Michael sees another physiotherapist; this time the treatment is less science and more New Age music and gentle massage and he’s uncertain if it will do any good. With some long days between here and Mérida, we are forced to confront the fact that we may have to change our plans. A quiet sadness sits with us at lunch. Then we wander, the three of us, in and out of Córdoba’s famed patios, cool oases in the searing heat of summer and a profusion of flowers at this time of the year. Water flowing from fountains. Espaliered lemon trees shading the whitewashed walls, the pots painted a deep blue, the blooms cascading pink and red and orange.
A siesta, then a stroll into the modern city centre. We run into Michel, the French artist, and join him and his exhibition designer in the plaza for beers and the telling of stories of journeys taken and lives lived. Paco stays to watch a football match on the big screen in the plaza while we enjoy a late-night stroll by the wide Guadalquivir River and across its impressive Puente Romano. In the morning we will leave Córdoba by different means to Paco and, depending on Michael’s injury, Anna may walk the remainder of the Camino Mozarábe alone.
This is the second part of a three-part series on walking the Camino Mozarábe. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 3.
For more information about this less-travelled Camino see our article Walking the Camino Mozaraé: 5 things you need to know.
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