Sunday 16th March 2025 – Ecija, Spain

It was a peaceful night and definitely much quieter than it would have been at the aire in the town. The other advantage of this hotel is that it is very close to the third Antequera dolmen, El Romeral. We headed there soon after it opened and found it to be the most interesting. There was a very good guardian there who, although he didn’t speak English, was able to explain the site very well by speaking slowly and expressively in Spanish and indicating clearly what he was talking about. The tomb is a tholos tomb from the Bronze Age although they are still working on a more precise date. We have seen many round tholos tombs in Greece, usually built with dressed stones that gradually move into the centre until they meet high above, creating a beehive shape. El Romeral is similar although it is built with rough stones and the top is closed with a large capstone. The weight of the capstone is transferred to the walls and stops them collapsing. El Romeral is totally original – no reconstruction work has been done and the structure has remained intact after thousands of years. There are actually two tholos buildings within El Romeral, joined by a short, low corridor. It is thought that the first tholos was where ceremonies were conducted and then the dead were taken through the corridor into the smaller tholos. Fascinating.
We moved on to the site of an ancient quarry, ‘El Coto de Las Canteras’ in Osuna. This high quality sandstone has been quarried since pre-Roman times and it reminded us very much of Bath stone in England. It has a similar honey colour and has always been a favoured stone for monumental buildings. Just like Bath stone, the quarrymen followed the good stone down, eventually mining the stone by leaving the surface, poor quality stone in place and taking out the good rock from underneath. This created a large underground space that has now been turned into an auditorium for concerts, cultural events and private functions. In 2004 the owners commissioned a local artist from Osuna to carve decorations into the stone, some of those you can see in the photos below.
We drove on to Ecija and a very good aire provided by the local council. It was getting quite late but it wasn’t raining, so we decided to have a short walk around the local area. Ecija appears to be a very pleasant town with lots of churches and convents.
Photos: The tumulus of El Romeral with the entrance on the left and La Pena in the distance on the right; The entrance to El Romeral; The doorway into the first, ceremonial, tholos chamber; The ceremonial chamber with the entrance into the second, burial, chamber; The roof of the tholos showing the capstone; The main structure of El Coto with sculptures around the door that leads to the auditorium; The Bacchanalian scene sculpted in the auditorium; A view of the quarry; Cara is dwarfed by the massive all-terrain motorhome parked next to her – it comes complete with its own massive generator.

 

Saturday 15th March 2025 – Antequera, Spain

It had been getting slightly warmer over the last few days and today we woke to BLUE SKIES! Definitely time to move on!
We said goodbye to our neighbour, a Spanish lady driving an English van. She had spent many years living in Cambridge but with both her parents being Spanish, she had decided to move back to Spain. She was in the process of buying a house not far from Orgiva. The house has 4 bedrooms, a terrace, a rooftop sun terrace and 5 acres of land, including an olive grove. The price is £96,000, which, as she said, wouldn’t buy a garage in Cambridge.
It was a beautiful drive up into the Alpujarra Mountains with great views over to the snow-clad peaks. Most of the time that we had been in Orgiva, the higher land was totally obscured by cloud and it was lovely to see the mountains as we remembered them back in 2008.
Once we were over the pass, the road gradually descended into the plains. The route took us around Granada and then west to Antequera where we parked in the car park of the Dolmens of Antequera site. This is what we particularly wanted to see here. There are three prehistoric dolmens, two at this site and one a little further out of the town. There is a small museum on the site that concentrates on the alignment of the three dolmens but there is nothing in the way of finds.
The trail around the two mounds took us to the Viera Dolmen, constructed of large vertical stones forming a corridor capped by massive stones. The whole structure was covered by a huge amount of soil to create an artificial hill. The corridor leads to a blocking stone with a rectangular hole cut in it, providing an entrance into a small (burial?) chamber. This dolmen was probably built in the Late Neolithic but later use has meant that exact dating is difficult. The same applies to the larger dolmen, Menga, which has been open and in use for many centuries but it is thought to have been constructed between 3,800 and 3,400 BC, the early part of the Late Neolithic, and definitely before the Viera Dolmen. It uses the same construction technique but with much larger stones and on a grander scale. The corridor of this dolmen leads into a large rectangular room with the massive roof supported on three large pillars. At the back of the room is a well that is 19.55 metres deep. The archaeologists are still trying to establish the date of the well – was it part of the original construction or much later? The fascinating thing about Menga is its alignment. Looking from the inside out of the entrance, you can clearly see the mountain of La Pena. This mountain had sites on it in the Early Neolithic but the most significant thing about the mountain is that it looks like a sleeping man. The alignment is quite deliberate and Neolithic man must have been awed by the figure. Undoubtedly, Mega was the scene of religious rituals.
We walked into the town and found an excellent restaurant, Coso Viejo, close to the museum. I chose clams with garlic and potatoes. It had more garlic in it that I would normally eat in a year and it was delicious!
The museum was very good, especially the archaeological section and we made our way back to the van before the site locked its gates at 18:00.
We drove to the aire in the town, which we knew was very popular and it was grossly oversubscribed, with vans parked on the roads nearby. We knew that a hotel, Los Dolmenes, on the edge of the town also allowed vans to stay, so we headed there. We enquired at reception and were told that it would cost €10 with electricity but, if we didn’t want electricity, we could stay for free. We didn’t need electricity so we settled down for the night.
Photos: View of Orgiva with the snow on the mountain behind; The anthropomorphic mountain of La Pena; The entrance into the Viera Dolmen; The entrance of the Menga Dolmen; And the central chamber; Looking out from the entrance corridor – La Pena is clearly visible; A very fine 1^st or 2^nd century AD carving from an Antequara Roman villa showing an actor wearing a mask; A view looking out from the line of the Roman city walls.

Friday 14st March 2025 – Orgiva, Spain

There was rain on and off all night and thunder when we woke. That was followed, briefly, by a lull before over five hours of continuous rain. The campsite was the worst that we had seen, with large pools of water everywhere. Clouds wreathed the mountains and it was only when the sun broke through late in the afternoon that we could see that much more snow had fallen at higher levels.
We had intended to stay at Orgiva for a while to enjoy some warmth, do some walking and cycling (me only) and investigate the surrounding villages but the weather had prevented all of that. The forecast suggested a good day tomorrow and then a return to more rain. We decided to move on and do some sightseeing even if it might be in the rain.
Photos: The campsite during the rain.