From Cordoba we moved east to Segura de la Sierra (red flag)
below. We chose Segura for access to walking tracks, wanting to
keep our fitness up and wear in Kim’s boots before the Coast to Coast walk in
England.
We discovered that Segura was a
cute village positioned a steep hill surrounded by lots of cliff faces, with a big
castle perched right on the top. When we located our accommodation among the
tight, twisty, narrow streets, we found we were right below the castle grounds.
Segura de la Sierra had lots of interesting sites to check,
and despite the 40’C heat we kept a pattern of walking in the morning and
visiting sites at about 6pm when it was cooler prior to our late Spanish
dinner. The castle had been extensively restored and presented for tourists. Additionally there were Moorish baths, a Jesuit church and various historic
gates and walls to emphasize the long history of the town.
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| On the last day, some cloud rolled in preceding a thunder storm |
To our delight, several Spanish ibex (think mountain goat) were grazing each morning and evening on the grassy area between our accommodation and the castle, unconcerned about humans passing by.
The downside of Segura was accommodation with tissue thin
walls, so we were short on decent sleep. This was accentuated by the hot night-time temperatures. Our hosts told us that the average
temperate this summer was 10’C higher than last summer – although last summer
was slightly cooler than average. When locals have enough English to interact
with us, they complain about the relentlessly hot weather; it seems they are
not enjoying it any more than we are. In Segura we were out of tourist
territory and everything closed for siesta between 2 and 7 pm. So if we forgot
to buy food before 2pm, we had to improvise from existing supplies or go
hungry. All in a day’s tourist work.
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