Rute-Priego de Cordoba

Dear Friends,
After a slap-up breakfast at Hotel Maria-Luisa (canteen coffee and diy
toast) I set out for Priego, stopping only in the centre of town to buy a
roll of bread and to send home some used maps (13 used, 13 to go). As usual
there were no signs to tell me where to leave the town, but this part of
the route has been travelled by the inestimable Juan Holgado with a GPS, so
I was following the route he took, albeit in the other direction. There
were more olive plantations on this side of town, but as the path rose, it
hugged the side of a steep mountain where cultivation was impossible,
andthe scenery was more varied. Oaks, hawthorns and gorse predominated, and
the noise of the birds and insects became more intense. There were still no
signs of any kind for the gr7 path, until I reached a path at the side of
an olive grove well off the road, where suddenly there was a whole rash of
red and white marks painted on the rocks. You could not possibly have ever
seen these marks had you not already known the way. Almost as soon as they
started, they stopped again, and I was left to my own devices to find the
rest of the way to Priego.
It's a nice town, and is the first place that feels like that since Ronda.
People are dressed like townspeople and look like townspeople. The other
towns I've been have been little more than meeting places for people from
the surrounding countryside.
Distance today 27km.
Toodle-pip!
___
A wayfarer in Spain