As a further postscript to our stay in Cabra, the subject of my last post and the birthplace of Dionesio Alcalá Galiano with its connection with our home island of Galiano, the plate in the photo below is mounted on the wall of the kitchen of our South Galiano Community Hall. It shows the church tower, located on a rise above the the main square of Cabra, which you can also see in the photo I took there.
In the morning we left Cabra, cycling through the Maria Luisa Park beside our hotel and back up the bike path to resume our trek along the lovely Via Verde del Aceite. It was a gorgeous morning that called for shorts with the forecast temperature at 27C.
We would only have a 15 Km ride to our next destination, Lucena. There was now lots of new and very informative signage on the path, something that had been missing for most of our route elsewhere in Andalucia. The end of our cycling from town to town was rapidly approaching. We were locating ourselves so that we would be able to take a train or a bus for the last leg to Granada as it appeared there was not a good bike route. The train we thought we could take from another town, Jaén, on the Via Verde, would have required an 8 hour trip with a connection in Madrid. So we planned to cycle to Puenta Genil after Lucena, where it seemed we could get a Renfe semi-fast train to Granada. There seem to be 3 types of trains in Spain, fast, semi-fast and regional but you have to make sure the train will take bikes and you need to reserve for your bikes.
It was another beautiful ride to Lucena and while we were both feeling happy to be on such a easy, flat, safe bike path after some of the more challenging parts of our route, we were already regretful that this part of our winter cycle in Spain was coming to an end. The unknown aspect of every day on the bike path when you are cycling from one place to another is exciting and quite addictive and we were feeling reluctant to give it up. It really is very much about the journey when you are cycle touring, not the destination.
As we approached Lucena, we were joined by a few other day cyclists but mostly people out for a Sunday morning walk. We continied to be amazed that this far into our trip, we had not encountered any other cycle tourers, except for one couple back in Malaga. As on other sections of the Via Verde,the old train station has been preserved and repurposed and next to it was a lovely restaurant with a big sunny terrace overlooking the town of Lucena below. We happily parked our bikes and stopped for a nice leisurely Sunday lunch. Though there were empty tables when we arrived, they rapidly filled up with other cyclist, walkers, and families, along with dogs, all enjoying the spring sunshine. We both had the huevos revueltos, scrambled eggs, a very common menu item in Spain that comes with different vegetables or con jamon. Mine was with green beans, Jim’s with asparagus.
Then we headed down the hill into the small town of Lucena on what appeared to be a brand new bike path past yet another olive oil processing plant and then beside a very large development that a sign said was Parque Europa, still being built out. On investigation, this turned put to be a leisure and sport complex with childcare facilities and gardens, a restaurant and bar, beside new fairgrounds and a bullring, apparently co-financed with 80% of the European Regional Development Fund and a 20% municipal contribution. Impressive for a small town of about 45,500. We very much appreciated the bike path into town. Always feels like a welcoming red carpet to me.
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We found our accommodation, the Dona Lola Boutique Hotel, only a few years old, on a pedestrian-only street. It was one of the nicest hotels we stayed in on our trip. Here is an example of how inexpensive we found Andalucian accommodation off-season - the Dona Lola was 50€! Definitely a low season rate prior to Easter but I just checked this hotel and for the same room it’s now 89€, still extremely reasonable for very nice accommodation.
Surprisingly, Lucena has an interesting and very sad Jewish history. During the Muslim era, it was the main nucleus of the Jewish population in Al-Andalus (Andalucia). In fact, Lucena was inhabited exclusively by Jews between the ninth and twelfth centuries. From a history site - “Jewish immigrants, expelled from Rome by Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius between 14 AD and 54 AD, and those dispossessed and persecuted following the Jewish – Roman wars of 66 – 135 AD, emigrated to different parts of the Roman Empire. Many came to Spain and by the 10th century, constituted one of the largest and most prosperous communities in the world. Eliossana (now Lucena), was nicknamed the ‘Jew’s City’, because, for the first few hundred years of its existence, it was inhabited entirely by Jews. It was known as the ‘Pearl of Sepharad’.” The economy was based on olive groves, vineyards, agriculture, commerce and crafts.
We did not have the chance to see this but there is a Necrópolis Judía. This was discovered during the construction of a ring road in 2006, and some 346 tombs were found and dated from the early medieval period between the years 1000 and 1050 AD, when this town was at its most vibrant.
Tragically, the fate of the Jewish population in Lucena mirrored what happened elsewhere in Andalucia. In 1146, during the Almohad wars, the Jews were persecuted and many were forced to convert to Islam. Lucena was conquered by Castile in 1240. The fate of its Jewish community during the riots of 1391 resemble that of the other Andalusian communities, total destruction. Many were killed, many were forcibly converted, some escaped.
Regarding the train, further investigation on Jim’s part revealed that the train from the next town after Lucena, Puenta Genil, would not work to get us to Granada either - no bikes - but the bus from Lucena would according to the online schedule. As it was our first experience with Spanish buses, we decided to find the Lucena bus station and make sure it was all as we understood it. A short walk from our hotel, we successfully purchased tickets for us and the bikes. Since we would have an extra day, we decided to bike to Puenta Genil anyway as it was the end of the Via Verde, stay the night and bike back to Lucena for another night at the Dona Lola before getting the bus to Granada. Our lovely hotel receptionist confirmed they had space but it would have to be an apartment. Again the rate was very reasonable and we happily agreed.
So we booked a hotel in Puenta Genil for our next night, had a preliminary exploration of Lucena and went to bed looking forward to our last ride to a new town, our return to lovely Lucena and our “apartment”, and our bus ride to Granada, where we had an AirBnB booked for a week. Almost there.
This featured blog entry was written by Jenniferklm from the blog Cycling in Andalucia.
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