The fog eventually lifted as we found our way out of Carmona below the big gate, the Puerte de Seville and eventually onto the A-380, a flat, straight, quiet country road that would take us right to the town of Marchena, our next destination en route to Cordoba. It would be the last of our flat rides for awhile. By car, Carmona to Marchena would take 26 minutes but we had a very good cycle of 28 km through flat, peaceful agricultural lands.
We were headed for Marchena to get on the Via Verde de La Campiña which traverses the countryside to Cordoba. Some interesting rail history from the viaverdes.com site:
Andalusia had one of the densest railway networks in Spain developed by different rail companies. Two companies built rail lines to connect Seville and Cordoba. The first route, opened in 1859 was developed through the Guadalquivir River valley, a route that endures today. The second route to Seville through Marchena was completed in 1885 but after the disappearance of the private companies and their integration into Renfe in 1941, this second more difficult countryside route lost importance and after a gradual decline was finally closed in 1970.
Development of the Via Verde de La Campaña for pedestrians and cyclists started in 2005 and maintenance of different sections fall under both the Córdoba Provincial Council and city councils along the way, which accounts for the different track conditions we have encountered. Our plan was to ride the Via Verde from Marchena to Cordoba.
Approaching Marchena, we found what looked like a very new bike path leading into the town by some rail tracks which took us along a park into the centre. We found the main pedestrian-only street and a bar/cafe and settled in to get our bearings before locating our accommodation for the night.
When I went into the little bar to use the bathroom I entered an amazing and very old space with beautiful woordwork and high stained glass windows. One of the servers noticed me looking around and gestured for me to go further into the building, telling me it was an old monastery.
It was a bit like time travelling back into an an old club - there was a lovely wood fire burning in a big fireplace and two men sitting around it reading newspapers. They looked a bit surprised to see me but were quite friendly and even gestured that I could sit down with them. I didn’t but it was quite a nice introduction to very old Marchena which sits on two hills joined by a valley.
In the centre of the Seville province countryside, Marchena has been occupied since prehistory. Here is some info from Wikipedia and other sources.
There are Roman remains though no evidence of a complex urban structure. It was not until Islamic rule that the town developed in a way that can still be identified. It was called Marsenʿah by the Muslims due to the large number of olive trees that surrounded the town and was developed into a walled habitation during the 11th and 12th C. with gates, alcázabas, squares and courtyards.
It passed into Christian hands in the middle of the thirteenth century, during the reign of Fernando III of Castile. In 1309, it was granted to the Ponce de León family through the great-grandson of King Alfonso IX. For several centuries, feudal life rolled along swimmingly until it didn’t. In 1367, Juan Ponce de León, lord of Marchena, was executed in Seville and a year later, Marchena and his lands were looted and destroyed by King Muhammed V of Granada, an ally of King Peter I of Castile, who also demolished the walls of the town.
During the medieval Christian period of the 14th and 15th C., the Arab city foundations were reused, with the walls being rebuilt and the old Alcazaba transformed into a castle. From the end of the 15th C to the beginning of the 19th century, Marchena had several gates, some of which remain, which link with the main exit roads.
Expansion of the town occurred during the 16th and 17th C. and during the 18th century, palaces, houses and plazas of architectural note were built. In the nineteenth century, the old inner city was abandoned in favour of newer neighborhoods and at the end of the 19th C, the railway and industrialization led to some economic recovery, mainly based on agriculture like cereals and olive trees.
However, much seems to have been added to the economic base since and to us it appeared to be a small but quite prosperous little town. Riding in, we could see big buildings that looked like they might house chickens and the roadside verges were adorned with white feathers (you see these things from a bike) as if chickens had been transported. As it turns out, there appears to be a lot of agri-business, livestock production and processing happening here, some of which requires the transporting of fowl.
We saw signs for PROCAVI, one of the largest turkey slaughterhouses in Europe, that currently employs about 1000 workers in Marchena, and Huevos Campacho which is an egg business. Olives and oil packaging, the wood processing sector (though we did not see much that you would call “woods” but perhaps olive tree wood from pruned and dead trees?), the manufacture of metal products, the textile industry and the furniture industry are all listed as part of the Marchena economy. This seems to be a diverse economics base that would provide a lot of employment and there were newish apartment buildings and signs of more to come just on the borders of the old town, but beyond that you were immediately in open, rural land. It was all quite contained and tidy.
When we were first looking for a hotel in Marchena it seemed a bit limited in a town of 29,000. We were curious about the Hospederia Santa Maria - a 17th C convent and that’s where we made a reservation. We have never stayed in a convent before, the reviews were good (very clean and quiet), only 55€ a night and 4€ each for breakfast. When I made the reservation in Spanish by email and provided our approximate arrival time, I got a perfect message back, “ Vale. Sin problema. Hasta mañana si Dios quiere. Sor Consolata.” (OK. No problem. Until tomorrow if God wants to. Sister Consolata.) I guess God wanted to, as we did arrive a few days later at the doors of the convent.
We discovered this is a cloistered convent (though declining in numbers, Spain has a large number of cloistered nuns) where we would have no face-to-face contact with the nuns. They are the Franciscan Poor Clares, dedicated to a life of fraternity, poverty, chastity, love and joy without undue interference from people or things. Their website says they run an inn, embroider and make handmade sweets.
We arrived at the convent quite dramatically through a very old arched gate and then into a courtyard
When we entered the courtyard, there was a couple in a little kiosk buying the sweets made by the nuns. There was a chart on the wall with the different kinds of sweets listed and the prices and in the kiosk, a window behind which the boxes lay. The couple were communicating with a nun they could only see dimly behind the big turntable on which they would put their money and she would put the boxes of sweets. We checked in to our accommodation the same way - passports and cash on the turntable that was twirled to deliver the goods to the nun and we got the keys to our room on the next twirl. Many of the sweets were made with almonds and I bought some cookies. We have seen signs for other convents selling sweets so it seems ecclesiastically approved. There were two buzzers on the wall to summon a nun either for the accommodation or the sweets.
Anyway, our room was on the ground floor of a lovely inner courtyard, with two twin beds (I wonder if that is a convent policy), old fashioned furniture, obligatory crucifix over the beds - and wifi. You would not call it a cosy room but very clean with a good bathroom and the bikes could be right outside our room in the locked courtyard. We had missed the late lunch opportunity and could not find anything open in Marchena for an early dinner so we hit the Mercado and had a picnic dinner in our room.
We enjoyed walking around old Marchena. There were beautiful walls, gates and churches.
And I took a lot of photos of very pretty tiled entrances to houses.
As well, there were new parks and a very fancy pedestrian/bike rail line crossing structure that seemed quite unnecessary as you could simply walk across the tracks on the road but a nearby site looked like it was slated for a big residential development. We confirmed our route out of town towards Cordoba for the next morning’s departure, a road across the tracks near where we had ridden in.
It was a bit like a movie set walking around at night. We saw our nuns bustling back to the convent with their shopping, consisting of what we hoped might be good breakfast items!
One thing about staying in a convent; you are pretty well guaranteed a very quiet night. Ironically, my morning shower was bracingly cold but that turned out to be our fault as we had inadvertently flicked the switch for the water heater in the bathroom off the night before, thinking it was a light switch. The nuns would have been proud of my fortitude!
Daysayuno was in another room of the courtyard and the nun liked our request for an early time as they had Mass at 8 or 8:30. We were the only guests for breakfast in another room off the courtyard, also very austere with solid wood chairs and tables - religious paintings and crucifixes on the walls. Shortly after we sat down a little cart was soundlessly pushed out from under another turntable with bread, butter, jam, pates, a small jug of hot coffee and a larger jug of hot milk. It was a bit surprising that the bread was in a commercial plastic wrapper rather than freshly baked - could they not have fit that into all the cookie baking? It was a spare repast. But the coffee was hot and strong, especially welcome after my cold shower.
So off we went, headed for the next town of Ecija. Worlds within worlds. Perhaps the nuns would be saying a special prayer for our journey. As it turns out, we would need it on the Via Verde de La Campiña!
This featured blog entry was written by Jenniferklm from the blog Cycling in Andalucia.
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