Although we had ditched the idea of a day trip to Seville, we were still keen to see a little more of the Andalucian countryside while based in Cordoba. So for two days running, we've headed out of town: to Espiel yesterday and then to Montoro today (there are more good day trip suggestions here).

Cordoba is at the centre of a really good network of bus routes. The best place to find out about the options is the bus station website. Once you have a destination and time in mind, you can do a little further digging on Google to determine the relevant bus company.

Both yesterday's San Sebastian bus and today's Ramirez bus were very comfortable. Swish even. Both journeys took 45-50 minutes, and cost, respectively, EUR 4.70 and EUR 4.15 per person per way. You buy the tickets directly from the bus driver.

The best known of Andalucia's white-painted villages (pueblos blancos) are further south. But both Espiel and Montoro -- with their swathes of white houses clustered on hillsides around churches, and their narrow, cobbled, steep streets -- surely count among their number.

The road to Espiel winds very picturesquely up into Andalucia's grey-green tufted hills. Once you're back on foot, there are photo opportunities everywhere as you start to climb the streets of the town.










After a quick coffee at a bar with huge deer torsos emerging from the wall, we trudged up to the lookout above the town, beguiled en route by the scent of tree resin and the song of birds. The only challenge was to avoid the hordes of furry caterpillars that seemed to be out and about everywhere.

The view out over the ring of hills that shelters Espiel is well worth the effort.





Buses are always that bit more awkward to fathom than trains. Whereas there was a nice, official-looking bus stop where we'd got off, the lack of an equivalent on the other side of the road left us perplexed. But a couple of helpful locals directed us to the appropriate bit of pavement, and the return journey was accomplished painlessly.


Today was pretty much a repetition of yesterday, but going northeast from Cordoba, rather than northwest. Not such a mountainous route, but the towns on the way -- El Carpio and Pedro Abad -- look like worthy pueblos blancos in their own right. Lots of the pylons are topped off with stork nests. And although I'm a bit dubious about the merits of regimented fruit farms, the acres of trees -- all in blossom at the moment, even the tiny ones -- were undeniably pretty.

Montoro is situated in a big loop of the Guadalquivir (the river that flows through Cordoba).

Before you reach the really narrow winding streets, you see some handsome buildings, with interesting wrought-iron balconies.



Montoro's main claim to fame is a fine medieval bridge. A very pleasant walk takes you across the famous bridge, along the river (with great views of the town along the way), back via the next bridge and the town-side bank (having stopped to picnic on the way), and up the vertiginous streets to the San Bartolome church.














Neither Espiel nor Montoro is on the tourist trail (or at least not in February), so you hear nothing but Spanish, there are no souvenir shops or touts or tour-operators, and everything is pleasantly local and low-key.

Long may it remain so (and I'm fairly confident my modest little blog will not change things in the slightest...). Outside the tourist office, there's a little spiel in English which someone has crossed out and annotated with "Espanish, please". So there's obviously some concern about the way the wind is blowing.

We try to fly under the radar as much as possible in such places. Obviously, as soon as we open our mouths (or even before that), people know we're foreign, but we do our best with our poor language skills, and we try to be unobtrusive. I hope we succeed, but who knows?

I hope, too, that Espiel and Montoro remain characterful and local as long as the majority of their citizens want them to.