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High up in the hills, Brian Jackman gets in touch with the birds and the bees of Andalusia In a quiet back street in the Andalusian town of Arcos de la Frontera stands the 17th-century Convent of the Mercedarian Nuns. The nuns belong to an enclosed order, go barefoot and live in what used to be the old town prison, but they have a link with the outside world. Inside the convent porch a sign reads: "Please ring if you wish to buy biscuits." I pressed the buzzer and waited. Suddenly a small window slid open and a disembodied voice muttered from behind a one-way mirror. The biscuits were based on old Moorish recipes using honey and marzipan, said the unseen sister. One box would cost me 550 pesetas. I handed over my money and the window snapped shut like a trap. When it opened again, there were my biscuits. Arcos is steeped in the history of the Moors, who swept into Spain in the eighth century, They named it Medina Arkosh and lived there for 700 years. Their alcdzar, or stone fortress, still stands on the edge of the high yellow cliffs, where kestrels hover in the up-draughts. "It is said there are ancient families in Morocco who still have keys to some of the oldest houses in Arcos," says Hugh Arbuthnott, as we stare out from the town ramparts towards the distant sierras. For five years, Hugh, a former Black Watch officer and City gent, and Jane, his wife, have been leading walking safaris into the wilds of southern Spain from their home near the Andalusian mountain village of Gaucin. At first their walks followed the same path: from Gaucin to Cortes de la Frontera and then over the Sierra de Libar to Ronda. But last year Hugh pioneered a new route from Arcos back to his home through the half-forgotten frontier country which had once lain between the Moors and their Christian enemies. The Moors were an extraordinary people, said Hugh. "Here in the land they called Al-Andalus sat the Caliph of C6rdoba, surrounded by a library of 250,000 books; while beyond the Pyrenees the kings of Europe could scarcely read or write." In the 13th century the Catholic kings of northern Spain pushed back the Moors until all that was left to them was their original Andalusian heartland between the mountains and the sea. Arcos de la Frontera, Cortes de la Frontera, Jimena de la Frontera - in the names of the towns you can still trace the line where their vanished border ran. Beyond it lay a march, a land beyond the pale, protecting this last kingdom of the Moors until the fall of Granada in 1492. It was this medieval no-man's-land that we planned to cross on foot with the help of Hugh and his pack-mules. So we left the kestrels and the castle and the barefoot, biscuit-making nuns of Arcos, and headed on to the Cortijo Barranco, a gracious 18th-century Andalusian farmhouse in the nearby hills, where we were due to stay the night. Its Spanish owners, like many of their British farming counterparts, were diversifying into tourism. A door in the dazzling white farmhouse walls led into a cobbled courtyard filled with roses and the scent of orange blossom. Later, in the last of the
evening light, I went for a stroll among almond orchards and rumpled hills
where partridges called and migrating bee-eaters, fresh from Africa, shrilled
as they flew overhead. We walked comfortably, our backpacks safely stowed away in panniers on board a string of mules led by Antonio, our 74-year-old muleteer. Antonio had lived all his life in Algar, he told us, working with his mules, which he used for ploughing and carrying loads of cork as far as Ronda, For a long time he was also a carbonero - a charcoa.l-maker. "But not any more," he said. "It's a profession that has almost died out." We pressed on through the glory of the Andalusian spring, between grassy banks where bee orchids grew and butterflies skittered away at every step. "On days like this," said Hugh, "there is nowhere else I'd rather be." Our route lay beneath high crags where griffon vultures sailed on outstretched wings in their endless search for carrion. Above them, slowly turning in the blue, a pair of short-toed eagles drifted, hunting for snakes in the stony hills. Lunch was a picnic in a pool of shade: fresh asparagus and air-dried ham with crusty bread, followed by sweet pears and - since this was Andalusia - a siesta in the grass. Next day, pushing on from Algar, where we had spent the night, we entered an Arcadian landscape of flower-strewn meadows and pollarded oaks, where cuckoos called from every hillside. All morning we walked through this serene countryside and saw no sign of human occupation except for a sturdy wire fence behind which stood fierce fighting bulls. After eight miles we came to a tumbledown cottage, its rusty roof tied down with ropes. In the doorway stood a woman in black who welcomed us in with a voice like a chainsaw. Inside, the walls were adorned with the icons of contemporary Spain; pictures torn from magazines of bullfighters and topless models, and paintings of the Virgin Mary. A fire burned in the open hearth and a lunch table had been set out on the uneven stone floor. In Britain the health police would have closed the place down on the spot, but the feast we enjoyed there was fit for a Marques. First came tapas of morcilla sausage and hot chorizo; then Spanish omelette, cheese and salad, Rioja wine and strong black coffee. Our eating place stood at the top of .a pass called the Puerto de Galiz. From now on, said Hugh, we would be walking throughthe Parque Natural de los Akornocales and its patrimonial forests of magnificent cork oaks. Cork oaks are extraordinary trees. Every nine years the precious cork bark is stripped away to expose their naked, rust-red torsos; but their dignity remains intact. Some of these gnarled old forest giants looked as if they had been standing since the end of the Reconquest, more than five centuries ago. Antonio, our first muleteer had left us at Algar. Now we were joined by Roque, a younger man with a chin of blue stubble who looked like Eric Cantona. Roque's three mules were decked out with embroiidered harnesses and scarlet tassels, as if they were going to a country fair. He asked if I would like to ride one. I chose Chica, an eight-year-old with a glossy coat that shone like polished chestnuts. "Beautiful, is she not?" said Cantona's double. On we toiled, up into the Sierra del Aljibe, the high, wild hills of Spain where the air is clean and the light is pure and you feel you could walk for ever. Sometimes we paused to slake our thirst, squirting water into our mouths from the leather botas carried by the uncomplaining Chica. As we drew closer to the Peiion de Buitre (Vulture Rock), the scent of the gorse rolled down towards us in thick creamy tides. Out in the open we passed herds of red, long-horned Retinto cattle, the same hardy breed that the conquistadors took to Texas and Mexico, grazing in pastures of pink stork's bill flowers. For the next two nights we stayed at La Moracha, an old hunting lodge hidden deep in the woods. When evening came, in the golden hour before sundown, we followed Roque, an accomplished stalker, through the crackling dry woods and waited for the red deer to come out to feed on the far side of the valley. Next morning we were off again through the enchanted forest. In a glade men were digging up club-fisted roots of heather. The roots would be taken down to Jimena de la Frontera, said Hugh, to be carved into tobacco pipes. At last we came to the Puerto de la Yegua, the Pass of the Mare. From this lofty viewpoint we could see the ridge beyond which lay Gaucin and our journey's end. To the south shone the white town of Medina Sidonia and farther off, the Rock of Gibraltar and the blue mountains of Morocco. But the Straits themselves were hidden under a blanket of cloud, so that, as in the days of Moorish rule, it was impossible to say where Spain ended and Africa began.
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