“Now more than ever, when the empty spain fills pages and pages of press and mentions in social networks; now that we turn our eyes to the towns, landscapes and rural areas; now that we need to travel safely and reclaim our roots and our culture… Now is the best time to discover, and rediscover, the rural spain l”.
who speaks is Javier Rico , a journalist specializing in the environment, biodiversity and rural development, who recently published for geoPlaneta the ‘Guide to rural Spain. Month-to-month proposals . A complete book that collects 100 slow travel proposals , sustainable and calm, going through all the seasons of the year and all the provinces of Spain. A total of 54 more extensive proposals and 47 more abbreviated ones.
there are of wine tourism, oil tourism, geotourism, astrotourism, bicycle tourism, trufitourism, apitourism , so detailed to know places associated with cinema as the one that takes us to Campo de Calatrava in Ciudad Real, the land of Pedro Almodovar.
Two years have passed since he began compiling all these proposals, during all this time Javier has been touring the country hand in hand with its inhabitants, who have perseveringly managed to preserve traditions and spaces.
His first stop was in the Ricote Valley, Murcia . “Days later the pandemic broke out and all the travel forecasts and publication of the guide went to waste. I have been traveling and writing for around a year, but we must also take into account that I had already been to many of the landscapes that I describe and what I have had to do is update the information with a lot of documentation and telephone interviews”, he stresses. for Traveler.es.
The result is a map with slow escapes , as he describes them, and for a Spain of traditions because what they were looking for was not that the provincial capital be 50 km from the accommodation, but about 5 or 10 km there is a lagoon full of waterfowl , a recently restored medieval tower or a natural cosmetics workshop that helps reverse the depopulation of these rural areas.
Nervión waterfall, Ayala valley (Ávila).
‘Guide to rural Spain. Month-to-month proposals’ It is intended for all types of readers. "Even for those who often go to their homeland or host country because they have a house there, but are unaware that hundreds of meters away, five or ten kilometers away, they have a Visigothic necropolis, a store with local organic products or an ethnographic museum with houses from Siberia and Central Asia. Of course, it will be more liked by those who savor and thoroughly savor the trip , unhurriedly, integrating themselves into the natural and rural landscapes they visit and, above all, talking and listening to those who live in those landscapes and show them to us”, adds Javier to Traveler.es.
Advancing what we can see in the guide in the coming months, and without revealing many secrets, he takes us (and reveals to us) the autumn forest landscapes Sierra Norte de Guadalajara Park.
Already in November we should be planning a visit to the Ambroz Valley , in Cáceres, and in December as essential proposes a route through the Sierra de Andújar and Campiña north of Jaén . “I would focus, for example, on chestnuts and honey from the autumn forests of O Courel , in Lugo. I say chestnuts and honey, not just in the plan to go, taste and/or buy and go home or go somewhere else. I say this because of the festivals and the traditional uses of chestnuts that can be experienced, and because of knowing the beekeeping in the area, the beehive pens to defend them from bear attacks, with paths to visit them…”, he suggests.
And he adds: “I could also talk about hamlets between equally magical forests in the Gorbeia of Biscay , from the saffron harvest in The Manchuela (Albacete) and the full yellow poplar groves in the same place, on the edge of the Jucar , or in Castronuno (Valladolid), on the banks of the Duero. Oh, and I also remember that wintering begins in autumn for many birds that come from northern and central Europe, so we go further east, towards the Ebro delta , the Valencia lagoon either the salt flats of Santa Pola”.
geoPlanet
Guide to rural Spain. Proposals month by month.
on amazon
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