Plank Road: Ronda

Today we took off to our furthest destination thus far, the small city of Ronda. The drive west of Antequera is through farmland with cereal crops and some other broadleaf crops as well as olive trees, the soil is incredibly red.

As Ronda is a bigger place, we parked in an underground parkade and then guessed which way to walk to the historic centre. We walked down a pedestrian-only street that was full of local shoppers. We ended up at the Plaza de Toros, or the bullring, which was built in 1785. There are not many bullfights held these days, something like three per year.

The tourist information centre is near the bullring, so we got a map and plotted our route. Ronda is very interesting, in that a deep gorge separates the old area from the new area of town, this is spanned with a wonderful bridge, known as Puente Nuevo.

We did a walking tour of our own in the old town, there are some fine old city walls and old bridges. We did a lot of walking up and down stairs and hills. Ronda is a bit too touristy for our taste, there are a lot of tour groups, tourist kitsch, horse-drawn carriage rides and the like.

Impressive statue located outside the bullring

The town is built right on the edge of the gorge

New town along the edge of the gorge

View of an old bridge lower down the gorge

Gate along the old city walls

Puerta de Carlos V (city gate)

View of the cliffs of the gorge

The quintessential view of the Puente Nuevo

We had already planned a walk out of Ronda to a Tajo del Abanico, so we headed through the old section of town to a nice plaza and had lunch on one of the benches. After lunch, we walked out of town and trudged along on another road walk. The road finally gave way to a trail which led to cliffs and gorges with some interesting rock formations.

The trail ended at a cave. The cliffs are made of rock known as ‘molasa’ which is made of sand and other sediments, they look as though they could come crashing down any moment. This turned out to be a fairly pleasant walk of about 10 km.

On the return walk, which was all uphill, we pinned it to get the road walk over with and made it back to town in about 40 minutes. We sat at a table in the plaza and had our standard café con leche.

After walking up into the new town, we found the mirador down quite a few steps, which had fantastic views of the gorge and the bridge. After gawking at the views, we walked back to the car and drove “home.”

Couple of curious characters