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Peter Hughes treks in an area imbued with Spanishness, from its garlicky breakfast to its mountain muleteers RIGHT FROM THE start it was obvious this was not to be an ordinary trek. The leader who met us, Hugh Arbuthnott, late of the Black Watch, announced we should walk to the Spanish frontier. Half apologetically he added, "It's only 100 yards." For a party prepared mentally and physically to follow him for a week in summer through the high sierras of Andalucia, this seemed a somewhat pedestrian beginning. But then we had yet to have elevenses. On the second day we did. We had walked from Gaucin, one of the pueblos blancos, a dazzling white village on the shoulder of a mountain. In the last century it was a day's ride from Gibraltar, the place where the British colonels and their women stayed on their way to Ronda. The trail had climbed through the shade of a spacious cork forest. Pedro, our accompanying muleteer, safely hazarded that the most ancient trees were "less than 2,000 years old". Most had been stripped of the bottom 8ft or so of their bark and stood around bare-legged, as awkward as sheep that had just been clipped. At 11 am we descended to a rocky river bed, lined with tall sprays of pink oleander. Pedro tethered his three mules and began to attack the panniers. He has always worked with mules, officially collecting cork from the mountains; unofficially smuggling tobacco into Gaucin from Gibraltar. He told stories of nights spent dodging the excise men on some of the tracks we were following. Control of the illegal tobacco trade was a condition of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 when Gibraltar was ceded to Britain. With cigarettes today in Spain costing three times the price they do in Gibraltar, there is reason to suspect that contraband may still make some contribution to the wealth of Gaucin, if no longer to Pedro. Arbuthnott was now dispensing elevenses: ice-cold stainless steel beakers from hand-stitched leather flasks, a choice of fresh lemonade or chilled fino sherry, and fruitcake. We sat on rocks in the sunshine, our calves tingling from the morning's climb, wild flowers beneath us, birdsong above us and Pedro repacking the mules. It was easy to reflect that, just for the moment, the travelling style of 19th-century officers was one of the other things in these parts that had not undergone much change. It was a Himalayan trek that gave Arbuthnott and his wife Jane the idea for their walk through southern Spain, that and the luxury safari camps of East Africa. Campamento de Castillejos is in the mountains of the Cortes de la Frontera national park. Six emerald tents shipped from Nairobi and shaded by evergreen holm oaks - with marble washstands. running water and Floris soap - look out over a rough pasture to a distant valley. A long, leaning bank slopes up to a grey-green ridge, speckled with trees. The camp catches enough cool wind to cany the dull rattle of goat bells across the hillside. Goat bells in each tent were used for more practical purposes, too: to summon Pedro and Paco, the camp manager, with pails of hot water for showers. While Paco pumped, Pedro, balanced on the rungs of a steel pylon at the back of the tent and clasping a hose, directed the water into a green plastic udder suspended from the roof. That night dinner was by candlelight in the dining tent - shrimp bisque, grilled pork, a local cheese and two of two dozen different wines, red and white, served during the week. We had brandies by the campfire and hot water bottles in our beds. Until now there had not been much impression of Spain. Late rains had left the hillsides green and looking like Derbyshire. The Arbuthnotts' house, where the safari starts, is as much Wiltshire as Andalucia, with its comer cupboards, roses and photographs of military men. From the campsite to its conclusion the walk was immersed in Spain: breakfast of toast drenched in olive oil and rubbed with whole cloves of garlic; jugs of honey; Candido, the donkey man, built like a gun emplacement and nick-named E! Brato: farmers riding to milk their goats at daybreak; old men with sun-stained faces but pates as white as their houses; tapas under plane trees. And there was the country itself: meadows brimming with colour - dog rose, cornflower, chicory and broom; paths scented with thyme and marjoram; limestone cliffs the colour of pewter, aloof and crazed; steep rock passes on which armies, Roman and Arab, had funnelled through the mountains; villages which spilled on to the hillsides in puddles of brilliant white, and the big, hot Andalucian tablelands of dusty fields, braided with olive groves and barley, as coarse as battledress serge. Andalucia is Tuscany unrefined. We trudged into Ronda on its 300ft escarpment at the end of the week, legs scratched, throats parched and spirits high with achievement. We had tripped through fields of butterflies and watched eagles wheel; we had sweated up mountainsides and picnicked on rugs under almond trees. In Ronda a tour party with name badges filed along the pavement. Chester Schwartz and Cindy Miller might have arrived from Rome: we had walked from Gaucin.
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