Sierra de Aracena Andalucia Walking Guide Book Map
Sierra de
Aracena 
a little known destination on the Spanish mainland
Sierra De
Aracena - a Walk! guide book 144 full colour pages; £11.99. 
Sierra de Aracena book Specification
& Contents
Sierra de
Aracena Tour & Trail Map at 40k scale covers our walking
region £3.99.
GPS
navigation files available - see
GPX Downloads
A hundred kilometres north-west of
Seville lies a region of truly unspoilt rural Spain. Once a
province of Portugal the Sierra de Aracena encapsulates
almost everything that we look for as the idyllic walking
destination; rural beauty in flora and fauna, breathtaking
landscapes, unspoilt towns and villages linked by old donkey
trails. All it lacks are high mountains. The Spanish have
known about this isolated region for sometime and arrive at
weekends and in mid-summer, but on weekdays and out of season
it returns to peaceful tranquility. Few 'outsiders' know of
this delightful region and you can be the first to read about
it in English. We first discovered the region five years ago,
when we thought it too isolated to justify a guide. Since
then we have returned regularly, completing our walking
research and map surveys in Oct/Nov 2003 and final walking
research in May 2004. Now we feel the time is here to
introduce you to our secret.
Where to start
describing this region is our problem, so we'll start with
the urban environment. Just try and imagine a region where
the streets of the small towns and villages are cobbled with
chips of white marble, where the great baroque churches date
from the
time of the re-conquest when this was
front line territory between the Christians and the Moors,
where the narrow streets and alleys are still more suitable
to laden donkeys than cars; avoid driving into the villages
to reduce the chance of stress! Once you have been here a few
days and have settled into the pace of life the regional
capital of Aracena seems very cosmopolitan as you sit outside
Bar Manzano watching life go by; this bar is infamous as a
homing point for expats and visitors. In Linares de la Sierra
they do not have doormats, they have their own marble design
built into the street's surface. Also in Linares you can take
coffee in the bullring, or behind the barred bar doors if a
bullfight is taking place. In Almonaster la Real climb up to
the mezquita tower for views over its famous bull ring to the
immaculate town. Alajar has an amazing Meson restaurant to
back up its generally stylish air. Only in the once
abandoned, but now being slowly repopulated, hamlet of Los
Madroñeros and Corterrangel is there no bar, elsewhere the
tipicos range from stylish in Aracena and Almonaster to
'distressed basic' in Cortegana with most filling the middle
ground. Arias Peña Montano is a must visit by car or on
foot, where we have a short steep walk up to the Peña
mirador. Every settlement is an eye opener and you could
spend a week just strolling round these picturesque towns and
villages.
Picture sloping meadows dotted with Cork Oaks where herds of inquisitve Iberian black pigs roam at will in a piggy paradise, switch to pollarded Chestnut trees with lively herds of goats, switch to the flock of sheep and lambs that graze outside the apartments at Villa Turistica Fuenteheridos, add in horses and donkeys grazing amongst the trees and meadows and you have the picture of an idyllic bucolic landscape. The wild life is equally impressive, we saw two black vultures on our first day and another two days later. On the steep trail up from the Los Molinos artist colony to the hilltop town of Cortegana we stopped to get our breath back. Five metres up the path a bullet head poked out of the undergrowth and stared at us; probably thinking 'You go all your life without seeing a Brawn, and then you see two at once.' Breaking eye contact the large otter scurried across the path and up into the overgrown hillside; our first ever wild otter!
Wild flowers abound like nowhere else.
Botanists arriving in Spring will think they have landed in
paradise. At first we tried keeping notes of the species, but
had to give up because there were so many including several
we had not seen before. The undergrazed meadows are a carpet
of colour from the flowers. Wild Peonies colonise the
chestnut orchards west of Castaño del Robledo. Occassionally
one specie will dominate a meadow or hillside but normally
there is a complete mix of species lining our walking routes.
Keen plants people should double our walking times just to
allow time to marvel at the wild flowers.
And the walking.
With settlements linked by a rural network of tracks and
trails centuries old you will not be seeing much of the quiet
tarmac roads in the region. Tracks and trails range from
immaculate cobbling to occassional cobbling to dirt and some
are eroded by storm damage. Most of the time we are on clear
well made trails but be ready for some rough stuff. This is
not a mountainous region but the steep sided ridges that
comprise the Sierra de Aracena have plenty of 'puff and
grunt' ascents, most just melt away but 
Linares de la Sierra to Alajar when we
were caught in a downpour was quite hard work. 'Adventurous
leisure walker' is how we would catagorise the walking with
plenty of ups and downs so a moderate level of fitness is
needed. Ros walked all the routes in her Merrils and Cats
sandals while I used a pair of Berghaus Vertimesh shoes, my
Bestard Race K shoes seemed a bit 'over the top' for this
terrain and were relegated to slippers around the apartment
and for evening wear!
Sierra de Aracena is
far from the realms of mass tourism and the nearest you will
find to crowds are busloads of Spanish pensioners visiting
the Grutas de Maravilla caves in Aracena and the famous ham
factories in Jabugo. Horse riding holidays are becoming
popular, expect jodphurs with breakfast at the Sierra de
Aracena Hotel and Finca Valbono. Headwater offer an
'Undiscovered Andalucia' week of guided walking in the
region. We flew to Malaga, picked up a pre-booked Peugot 206 and drove the 300 kilometres to stay at Villa
Turistica de Fuenteheridos. There are hotels and modern
hostels in Aracena,
Fuenteheridos, Grazalema,
Almonaster and La Posada in the country north of Cartagena;
full accommodation information will be in the book. In
Oct/Nov 2003 we visited the Feria de Setas in Aracena to
marvel at the amazing wild mushrooms collected from the local
woodland. This time it was the Feria de Animales like a small
county show for cattle, sheep, goats and pigs; but mostly an
excuse for the regions farmers to get together for three days
of 'Archers' style conversation, eating and not a little
drinking.
GPS
navigation files now available for Sierra de Aracena - see
PNFs
Sierra De Aracena -
a Walk! guide book 144 full colour pages; £11.99.
Sierra de
Aracena Tour & Trail Map at 1:40,000 scale covers our walking
region and beyond.£3.99.
