rendezvous with Ronda

I was woken by  the clanging of a bell at 7am in Ronda, the Andalusian city romanticised in the 19th century by travellers on their Grand Tours of Europe. After the industrial revolution, which mucked up so much of the country side in England, travellers were searching for beauty. 

Later, writers like Hemingway and Rainier Maria Rilke really put this place on the tourist map. Hemingway loved hunting and all that macho bull fighting stuff. Ronda's bullring, Plaza de Toros, is one of the oldest in Spain and the famous Romero family of matadors apparently spearheaded modern bullfighting as entertainment, rather than just as military training for men on horseback. One of them introduced the emblematic scarlet cape.

 Frankly, I don't mind a nice piece of steak, but the idea of killing bulls for sport is a real turn off.

As we passed the hunting museo with its stuffed animal trophy heads on the wall, Dave quipped "You would have to be game to go in there".  But I digress.

Oft quoted, Rilke described Ronda as "the town of your dreams" and Hemingway said it was the perfect place to go "if you ever bolt with anyone."

Words, from the right pen, can capture the collective imagination. Those of us lucky enough to have the leisure and the resources, pack our bags and endure all the tiresome bits of travelling in the hope that we too will experience the magic of another place. Many of us are still romantics, looking for the cute little villages, the grand cathedrals and the unspoilt countryside.

Ronda is beautiful but in summer is busy with tourists who join the locals in the shopping street in the  newer part of town, during the early evening stroll known as the paseo. 

I am reading "Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist In Andalucia", a book by Chris Stewart, an English shearer, busker and travel guide writer, who bought a farm in Andalusia. It is a bit like "A Year in Provence" or "Under the Tuscan Sun", books which encourage even more tourists to flock to certain regions to feed their fantasies of escaping from the boring, the ugly, or the tedious aspects of  everyday life. Sometimes we travel in search of happiness.

  

Apart from the sound of the bell [for whom does it toll?....groan], and Dave softly snoring, it was very quiet at this time of the morning in Ronda. We had one long sausage of a pillow, so I couldn't prop it up behind me and read, or turn it over during the night, with Dave's head on the other end. So I lay in bed and thought about how little things assume importance when we travel. How thick is the toilet paper? Are there enough coat-hangers? Can you hear the plumbing from other rooms? What IS that smell?

After our breakfast of coffee and tosteda [the lightly toasted small baguettes] with oil, Iberian ham, or butter and strawberry jam, we explored Ronda on foot. What an amazing setting for a town, perched on sheer cliffs with astounding views over valleys and hills. The  town is split by a dramatic100 metre gorge, El Toro, cut out by the river in prehistoric times.I was horrified to learn about the cruel practice of throwing people alive into this deep gorge during the Spanish Civil War.

 The best place to stay here would be the luxurious Parador, perched precariously on top of the cliff. We stayed at the Hotel Royal; cheap, basic and centrally located, but noisy on Saturday night when the night clubs below were in full swing.

In La Ciudad, the old Moorish quarter, we followed one of those enticing little roads between white houses with wrought iron balconies and came to a small square. Noticing a path winding down the steep hillside towards the river at the bottom of the gorge, I said "Let's go". Within minutes we were out of the town. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and silence of the broad green and gold valley below, encircled by pale limestone hills. As we descended, the path narrowed and became more hazardous, with large stones and deep crevices. 

We trod carefully. Almond, olive and fig trees grew wild on the hillside. Brilliant orange poppies and tiny azure blue flowers flourished amongst the bleached grasses. "It is so quiet", I commented unnecessarily.

After a while the silence revealed itself as a symphony of the subtlest sounds, unlike the roar of traffic, the metallic clattering of shoes on cobblestones and the clanging of bells in the town.

Firstly, I heard the bees humming around the poppies. Then a constant high pitched twittering of birds, as soft as static, formed the background vibration. In a distant field, a horse whinnied. A little bird, hidden in in a bush, made a clacking sound like castinets and I  heard a distant clucking of chooks.

Dave and I sat on a stone arch, once part of the fortifications, and soaked up the sounds of silence, the sun, flawless blue sky and the splendid scene.Returning by a circuitous route to the old Moorish part of the town, we saw the old people sitting on stone benches in the square, until the restaurateurs put out their tables and chairs and the first tour group in shorts and hats, like overgrown schoolchildren, followed their leader into the Cafe Bar San Francisco.The old men left their shady benches and disappeared, like cats melting into the shadows. The plaza was no longer theirs.

As the locals disappeared, we were surprised to see a horse sharing a drink with a man at the water trough on the edge of the square. These are special times, when as a traveller you suddenly almost see the past reincarnated in a private moment.

I am glad we visited Ronda, one of the stunning Pueblo Blanco towns of Andalusia, with its fantastic setting and panoramas, its harsh yet romantic history, its architecture, its legends and longings, superb cuisine [I loved the rabbit stew and Dave raved about his thin slices of baked beef in basil infused oil], and the glimpses of life in the bars and plazas and tiled porches of the white houses. 
We arrived here on a bus from Sevilla and next it is west to Granada by train.

Bodega El Socorro - our favourite eating place