Seville to Carmona

April 24, 2022

Sunday morning leaving on dedicated bike trails, was a breeze. The route took us one more time past Seville's distinctive and must see sights, the Alcazar, Cathedral and La Giralda. After the excitement of Seville’s Real Betis winning the national King’s Cup last night in front of its home team crowd, the city is hungover and quiet this morning.

It was paved roads until passing over the autoroute and ending up at Seville’s not so iconic sight, the penitentiary(!), and the start of dirt tracks. After two days of rain there was no way we could ride muddy roads for kms, so instead we re-routed to the A-398. But we still had to navigate a long stretch of mud to get to the the pavement, where we found a creek bed to wash the worst of the muck off the bikes before continuing on.

Scott Anderson recently added his thoughts to the "the tyranny of the guidebooks", but today we experienced its' opposite, "the serendipity of happenstance". After the mud we had 10 more km on narrow highways with fast cars, ditches full of trash, and even two specimens of desiccated road kill. We were worn out, grumpy and looking for a bench to have a lunch of leftover bread and cheese. Instead we happened upon a unique, Andalusian experience that we had read about but never expected to find here in the the town of Mairena del Alcor. In fact, we had almost turned onto our route at the main intersection, but something about the town looked interesting so we rode on and right into the middle of the last day of their spring festival, which brings out the community for a week long party. By 2:30pm on a Sunday, the festivities were getting going and people were out to be seen. Dazzling Andalusian horses with proud riders in formal riding outfits, fancy carriages with decked out families, and women and girls dressed in colourful Spanish dresses. Many were pleased to pose in their traditional costumes and I imagined them later dancing into the night to the click of the castonettes.

Lining both sides of the streets are the casettas, or tents, each owned by a family or local business that hosts parties late into the night. We wandered along, gawking and wishing we were staying for the revelry (or that someone would invite us in) but unfortunately we had another 17km to cycle.

The A-398 was quiet and we zoomed along to Carmona. We couldn't check in yet so we found a patio table at the Meson La Cueva for what was either a second lunch or mid-afternoon nosh. By the time our hotel re-opened for check in we were ready for a small nap, then woke feeling totally refreshed and ready to tackle Carmona. What a jewel of a place. We had some idea from reading blogs of cycle tourers who have been here ahead of us and of course from "guidebooks" but nothing could prepare us for the architecture and the VIEWS as the town sits on a ridge and overlooks the central plain of Andalusia. We entered through the Seville Gate past San Pedro's church. We walked to the cathedral, again happening to be just in time for the 8pm service. We continued on to the Cordoba Gate to take in the magnificent views over the green fields below before doubling back to the Alcazar del Ray Don Pedro (fortress) which is now one of the most beautiful Paradors (hotel) in all of Andalusia. We treated ourselves to drinks on the balcony and watched the sunset over the expanse spread wide below. Wow!

We then joined the townsfolk for 9:30pm, Spanish supper time at Bar Goya in the still-busy Plaza San Fernando. Over dinner we decided to spend another day to explore this most charming of white-washed towns.