Feeling a bit ‘cultured out’ with all the historic sight seeing we have done: Salamanca, Caceres, Merida, Cordoba and Seville, plus our knees are telling us they’ve had enough walking, a total of 34 miles.
So we left Seville on Saturday and headed to the Atlantic coast, close to the Portuguese border, 70 odd miles south west to one of Europe’s most extensive wetlands, the delta of the River Guadalquivir, Donana National Park (NP), which is the largest roadless region in Western Europe. This, the guide book says, is home to 360 bird species and 37 types of mammal, including the endangered Iberian lynx. You can only walk or cycle through it, unless you take a guided tour in a 4×4.
Unfortunately we hardly saw a dickie bird, but we saw the footprint of a lynx.
And this horny mammal …
The town of El Rocio, where we are staying, has very wide sandy streets, and lies on the edge of a lake where a huge variety of birds live including flamingoes. The town has a ‘Western’ feel to it, with more horseback riders and horse and carts than cars. At Pentecost thousands of pilgrims arrive on foot or horseback from surrounding towns and villages, and El Rocio is woken from its slumber to welcome the tidal wave of pilgrims.
