White Spanish Villages

The Spanish countryside is dotted with little white villages.  Many of them look the same: quiet, cobbled walkways, cafes, squares, chapels and hills.  But we did manage to find some that had a special feel about them and were different.
Ronda

From the car Ronda looked like a huge disappointment - high rise and terraced housing and we have seen more than enough of that in the last couple of weeks. We squashed our disappointment, found a park and went for a wander and were glad that we did.  The old part of Ronda has a character all of its own.  Straddling a gorge the town looks as though it could easily fall into the river below.  There were restaurants and gift shops open (surprisingly so for New Years Day) and so we spent a good part of the day wandering around enjoying the community feeling with a number of other winter tourists.

Sentinel
What a cute little village - a bit like the rock houses at Kinver in England.  However, unlike Kinver the houses weren't actually caves as in many cases the rock faces have been used as walls and ceilings.  I would have loved to go inside one of them but no one invited us - I guess we didn't really look like locals.

Olvera

Olvera wasn't on our list of things to do, but travelling back towards the highway as dusk fell we saw a cathedral and alcazar perched on the hill in the distance.  Who could resist? Driving through a cluster of narrow streets, where I held my breath to help Harry negotiate between cars, buildings and around tight corners we eventually found a a place to park.  We clambered back up the hill to the church and castle which was closed but we had a drink of tea and watched some teenagers enjoy the holiday weekend.  We noticed a number of grapes squashed on the ground – some people haven’t quite got enough luck for this year (maybe they wore double the red underwear or drank twice as much champagne as the tradition dictates to compensate for the lost grapes).  It was here that we lost the car for a while – lots of the streets look the same – and going down the hill we took a different route and there we were in another little narrow street looking just the same as the last one but no car in sight.  I was already to ask a local in Spanish ‘Have you seen a grey Nissan Micra parked in the street’ but we turned a corner and Hey Presto!!

Alora
We stopped at Alora – another little ‘white township’ on a hill – similar to many others we’ve seen in Spain and the continent.  We stopped at a cafe for a coffee (mainly for a visit to the loo)  but the coffee saw us bouncing off the walls and sprinting up the steep street to the top.  The trip down was a bit slower, a bit slippery and much wetter so we took it easy and found some quaint little streets and boutique shops before lunching in the car overlooking the castle.  Not much to say about the little town, except the castle keep is now the church graveyard and we learnt that a cappuccino without the froth and a bit more bean is called a 'corfo de cafe' up here in the highlands.