Ubrique to Jimena de la Frontera

November 28, 2021

Through the cork forest

As Al put it, today’s ride made staying in Ubrique worth it, although, had we had longer days or better weather, it would have been even better to do Grazalema to Jimena in one day.

Breakfast in Ubrique on a Sunday morning was a bit of a challenge. The hotel bar/restaurant wasn’t open, so we headed down the street. Nothing, nothing, except people buying from a bakery van, until we found the place to be. It was almost full, but we got a table. At first I was worried, thinking everyone had bought food elsewhere and brought it in, as they were all eating from paper wrappings. Then I saw: churros! They were coming from a closed area in the corner where Maria was busy serving outside customers and the waiters inside were ordering them for inside customers. Ok, then. Dos cafés con leche y dos churros. When they came, we also ordered a hot chocolate as we’d learned last time that it goes so well.

Somewhat fuelled for the day, we packed up and set off.

Looking back from the ridge south of Ubrique. Just past this point, we turned off A373 onto A2304 and lost most of the traffic.

Once we turned onto A2304, we entered the Los Alcornocales Parque Natural. An alcornocale is a cork oak tree and this park is here to protect this natural cork forest and its ecosystem. The cork is still harvested, of course, as it has been for hundreds of years.

It was cork trees with occasional pines all the way to Puerto de Galiz, which unexpectedly was not the highest elevation of the ride. We actually descended to this crossroads. Happily there was a restaurant here, very busy today at lunchtime with all the families on Sunday outings, motorcyclists, and us.

Al decided to add a little air to his tires after lunch.

We continued through the cork forest.

These trees were stripped of their bark this year.

The harvested pieces of cork are called panos.

We both thought this big old cork oak was beautiful.

There are some animals up there in the road.

There were 5 we could see; this trio plus one on on each verge, nibbling something off the trees (which weren’t alcornocales).

We were very nervous about passing those cattle. Did you see their horns? We waited for either of two things to happen—the animals moving off the road or a car coming along. After about 10 minutes, a car came by and we followed it closely.

At some point we left the alcornocales and entered a new kind of forest. These trees look almost spherical. Very unusual to our eyes.

Castle in the distance. When we got there, we discovered that Jimena de la Frontera is just below it on the other side of the hill.

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Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,207 km (750 miles)

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