Trips through Spain - Ronda - 1

Ronda was of interest to us because the great artist David Bomberg visited it during the period his late style & produced some very evocative paintings of it. We went in 1995 but stayed in a village outside Ronda itself called Benaojan, flying to Gibraltar & driving up. It is in fact, quicker to get to Ronda by flying to Malaga (& now available by a cheap airline) but we moved on later in the trip to San Lucar de Barrameda on this link & the getting back suggested Gibraltar.
Here is an illustrated record of this trip:-

Thursday 18th May 1995 From Gibraltar to Benaojan

At Gibraltar, we picked up our hired Fiesta and only had five minutes wait at the Spanish frontier. I had been concerned about the drive up to Ronda, as the road looked mountainous from the map, so I over-estimated the time it would take and worried about the flight delay pushing me into the dark. I need not have worried. The road was indeed spectacular, winding through mountains past dramatically placed villages, often clinging for no apparent good reason to mountain sides.

I though we were going up a pass but there was a plateau on top with Ronda at 750 metres in the middle of it or so it appeared. We drove through the town with difficulty but had no trouble finding the road off to Benaojan and, although the Hotel Molina del Santo is well concealed near the railway station and we had no local map, it proved easy to find. We were in this hotel, as it was run by a couple of English Greens, who use local produce and labour as far as possible. There is a set of villas with patios and ours (no 9) was particularly good, as it was shaded in the afternoon. I went in for a swim and taught the English son of the proprietor’s neighbours to dive. Cheeky monkey, he nicknamed me Father Christmas. We found that half board included tea and cake from 1600 - 1900. The mill-stream (Molino) runs by the side of the hotel site. The dinner was good as well. I had swordfish and Avis, hake.

Friday 19th May 1995

Buffet breakfast with suspect (Alpen?) müsli (too sweet) and lovely brown bread rolls. We went to Ronda and, as we had come down the ‘white’ road yesterday, we went up the ‘yellow’ (and theoretically, better quality) road. This was exciting, as it went round a mountain on a narrow, cliff-cut road past a dam with no water behind it. Then, we went through cork oaks before joining the main road to Ronda. There, we went round the by-pass and in from there. There was supposed to be a Feria on with a cattle market but we saw no sign of it. We did wander around looking at its dramatic location on the edge of a cliff and with a gorge cutting through it, painted by David Bomberg, of course (and this is where Avis and I come in as a couple).

Ronda from the East	Ronda from the South-East	In Old Ronda
The gorge from the bridge	Looking down into the gorge	In Old Ronda
The Ronda Valley painted by Bomberg	West from Ronda	In Old Ronda

The gorge is very hard to photo because you can’t get round it. The ‘old town’ is on the smaller portion but the whole town looks oldish. We came back about lunchtime and lazed. I went in the pool again and met a young couple, Toby and Katie who seemed reasonably compatible. We had tea with them and, after an after-dinner trip to Ronda to see if there was more Feria action (there wasn’t but children identify us as foreigners and say Hello or Good Morning), we had a drink until midnight with them, as they are only staying for the night.

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