We looked out of the hotel window to see snow on the awning and on the parked cars, though it hadn’t stuck to the road. We had breakfast, bought food for lunch and waited for the wet snow to stop before leaving at around 11:00 to rejoin the N432 through the Subbetica, dominated by olive groves and olive oil production factories. Our waterproofs served to keep out some of the cold and were not surprised to see that the temperature was only 6 degrees when we rolled into Priego mid afternoon.
It’s a lovely little town on a ledge with a vista of olive clad hills, and our apartment was in the maze of narrow whitewashed streets of the old Arab quarter, festooned with hanging baskets. We walked to the Fuente del Rey, three connected pools with spouting figureheads and Neptune riding the waves as the centrepiece, completed in 1803. It remained very cold with intermittent rain, the apartment was equipped with a couple of portable electric heaters which did little to raise the temperature.