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A short walk in Andalucia Andalucia may have changed drastically from the days when Laurie Lee set out on his epic journey, but Robert Alstead finds you can still get away from it all there - and in the kind of comfort Lee could never have imagined. The road to Malaga followed a beautiful but exhausted shore, seemingly forgotten by the world. I remember the names - San Pedro, Estrepona, Marbella, and Fuengirola... They were salt-fish villages, thin-ribbed, sea-hating, cursing their place in the sun. At that time one could have bought the whole coast for a shilling. Not emperors could but it now. - Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. ANDALUCIA was a very different place when Laurie Lee, armed with only a fiddle, walked there from England 60 years ago. It was very different even in the late Sixties, when he was writing his memorable account of the journey. Today, those poor fishing villages have evolved into the destination of a thousand package holidays, today's Costas. Any self-respecting emperor would run a mile from its gaudy attractions. But only a few miles inland, on the other side of the mountains that hem the thin strip of coastline against the sea, is a world that still resembles the rural, relatively poor landscape captured in Lee's memorable travelogue. Gangs of cork-cutters can still be found stripping the hoary trunks of cork oaks, goatherds with rough mahogany faces live timeless, solitary lives on the hills, and more than ever the farmers curse the sun that, in the longest drought on record, is ruining their crops and orange plantations. And these days, in the same breath, they curse the golf courses of the Costa that guzzle so much of the precious water. Here, far from the holiday crowds but within sight of that bastion of Britishness, the rock of Gibraltar, husband and wife team Hugh and Jane Arbuthnot have created "the Andalusian Safari". It is not as rugged as it sounds - quite the opposite. While there is an element of the field trip about it - learning about the land, its plants, birds, culture and history - this is about doing it in comfort. Accommodation is a combination of quiet villas, hotels in sleepy villages and two days of camping in an extravagant style reminiscent of a bygone era. While the sun is a factor to bear in mind at the height of the season, the walking is not hard. You are exercised, your appetite sharpened, but there should not be any overworked muscles or blistered feet. Each day's trek is at a gentle pace with regular stops. Mules or donkeys are usually at hand to make the walking even less tiring, and there is always the option of going by van. It is all terribly civilised. On a couple of days the only walking we did, after lengthy lunches, was to drag ourselves up to our hotel rooms for afternoon siesta, later rolling into a swimming pool. From the moment you arrive at the Arbuthnot villa of La Almuña, you are made to feel more of a house guest than a tourist. Iced drinks are proffered, wicker chairs pulled up and, with a hilly panorama stretching before you, the serious business of relaxation begins. Our group numbers only six and ranges from a 23-year-old journalist to a 71-year-old retired nurse. By the end of the safari to Ronda we will know each other well. Food is a big part of this safari experience. Jane, who has worked as a professional cook in Britain, and Paco, who has his own venta (inn) array us with a sumptuous spread every time we sit down at the dinner table. Most of the food is based on local dishes, using local ingredients. There are delicious soups made from almonds, spinach, and marrow, light and tasty tortillas, Pace's fine paella, succulent partridge in a nutty cream sauce, tender roasted meat of quail, soft cakes and Jane's fruity summer puddings. Each breakfast brings a mouth-watering selection of fresh local produce: crunchy oats mixed with the local runny yoghurt, freshly squeezed orange juice, melon, cherries, honeys, croissants, bacon and free-range eggs. The walking begins in earnest from Gaucin, a typically Andalusian pueblo blanco, with its steep, narrow streets, rambling piles of whitewashed houses and colourful blossoms. The path takes us through a hilly cork oak forest, the trees' lower trunks smooth and naked from years of harvesting. At an opening where sprawling pink-flowered oleander bushes burst from a dry river bed, Pedro, who has been silently driving his three mules at the rear, produces "elevenses" from his paniers - dark Dundee cake, fruit juice and fino sherry. We pass through more oak forest, and patches of imported eucalyptus, currently being rooted out because of their thirst for water. A golden oriole taunts us with its song, and has us scanning a screen of green foliage with binoculars, until a tell-tale flash of brilliant plumage skims across our view. Further on we pass through ancient olive groves, their rugged dark trunks twisted like wrung towels. High above, two griffin vultures circle like gliders. At the camp site, Paco awaits our arrival, a jug of iced fruit juice in hand. A white-clothed table has been set for lunch under the shade of an oak. Inside our tents are freshly made beds, complete with bedside tables and battery operated lamps. Each of us has an "en suite" bathroom which includes a shower - a rigged-up bag and chain contraption. On the second day, Pedro, the muleteer, takes us on a walk up to a limestone ridge. John Cortes, a renowned naturalist from Gibraltar, has joined us with his wife. His expertise is invaluable in learning about the natural history of the area, from distinguishing between short-toed and Bonelli's eagles to identifying a rhinoceros beetle that crash-lands among us as we enjoy after-dinner cognacs. There is some regret at having to move on from our peaceful camp site. We spend two more nights in hotels before some impressive walking on the final stretch; craggy limestone cliffs as we cross the steep ridge of the Sierra de Librar, flat-bottomed basins like natural coliseums, and ancient hollowed-out oak trees standing like scattered sentinels across an open prairie. Ronda is instantly recognisable from the guide books; two mighty arches of its colossal bridge span the 300ft deep gorge, El Tajo, that links the two halves of the town. Sun-bleached buildings peer over the cliff edges. One of them, the government-run Parador, a luxury hotel built from the old town hall, is where we will spend the night Ronda's im-pressiveness attracts the kind of crowds we have been busy escaping, but there is much to see there, from its famous 18th-century timber-built bull-ring to the cobbled streets of the old Moorish town, La Ciudad, where Renaissance and Moorish architecture meet. A few hours and a train ride later, Hugh is driving us back to Gibraltar airport. Queues of cars wait to get on to the rock. But Hugh, who has been full of surprises all along the way, has a final trick up his sleeve. Nonchalantly, he drives past the tail-back and enters through the exit point. Nobody stops us. It's that five-star treatment again.
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