Although it’s only 14km from Ronda to out next stop it was a generally horrible Journey! For the first time we run through a village with length limits and not height or width limits. It turns out it is bloody narrow but and the passing spaces are short – we guess they wanted to mix it up a bit with length limits! A couple of bits are bloody steep too and the various electronic doodads in the mothership beep and complain as it disables traction control and hill hold, and hill descent (yoo-oou left me just when I needed you most). Any campervans out there, watch out for the village of Arriate if you go north from Ronda on the MA-7403! But we make it through ok. The on-board footage is here (https://youtu.be/6SeThqSXE-s), but you probably won’t find it very exciting: the camera has a wide lens so the road looks wider, and all you’ll really get is Toby panicking and swearing.
Setanil De Las Bodegas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setenil_de_las_Bodegas) looks great. Initially it seems to be another lovely hill-top town. But wait, there’s more! The Río Guadalporcún that cuts through the town and has created the gorge that the town sits in/on has worked it’s magic and some huge undercuts have formed and the ingenious locals have built caves homes under the protection of the rocks themselves. This has happened many times as some of the cuts are fifty feet above the current river bed. Over the years, tourism has also played a large part in the evolution of the town and many of the quaint cave homes are now very nice restaurants.
We wander the town for a couple of hours and then back to the parking area for mothership as the olive presses are running at the co-operative over the road from our parking space and we go and check out how olive pressing works! Don’t know how many ‘extra’ are required in front of extra virgin olive oil when it’s still warm from the presses! We pick up a litre for about €4.50
We move the mothership to the top of a hill with a great view out away from the town and Selina comments that it could be an English summer evening. Omelette, beer and ‘Independence Day’.
We can still hear the co-operative running and the the presses run late into the night, they are still going as we turn in at one AM.
