Find the ammonite pavements in the Jurassic limestone and work out how many shells are in a square metre

Climb to the Picacho above Cabra for the view over the whole Subbética

Find the Fuente del Río, which rises at the edge of the town

Ride the Vía Verde de la Subbética on the old railway through the range

Work out what a UNESCO Global Geopark is and why these sierras qualify

The Sierras Subbéticas are a UNESCO Global Geopark, and the reason is ammonites: the Jurassic limestone here is packed with them, in places forming whole pavements of fossil shells you can walk across. Cabra sits under the Picacho, the sanctuary hill above the town, and has the Fuente del Río rising at the edge of the built-up area. Above the town is the Nava de Cabra and the karst plateau, with the Vía Verde de la Subbética running along the old railway through the whole range.

Cabra and the Sierra Subbética Geopark

Climb to the Cueva de los Murciélagos and find the three zones — the lived-in vestibule, the painted sanctuary and the burials at the back

Work out what the 1962 and 1969 digs established: that the Andalusian Neolithic began a thousand years earlier than anyone thought

Go into the Muslim castle built directly onto the crag above the houses

Ride or walk the Vía Verde de la Subbética through the tunnels and over the viaducts below the village

Eat the local sheep's cheese, which is what Zuheros sells beyond its own valley

Zuheros is a white village on a crag in the Sierras Subbéticas with a Muslim castle built into the rock above it, and above that is the Cueva de los Murciélagos. Excavations in 1962 and 1969 pushed the start of the Andalusian Neolithic back by a thousand years. The cave divides into three: a lit vestibule where people actually lived, a sanctuary with Neolithic and Chalcolithic paintings, and a burial zone at the back. Homo sapiens also left engravings and paintings of horses and deer here from around 18,000 years ago. The Vía Verde de la Subbética, on an abandoned railway, runs along the valley below through tunnels and over viaducts. The village also makes a sheep's cheese that it is known for across the province.

Zuheros and the Cave of the Bats

Go to the Fuente del Rey and count the spouts — there are well over a hundred

Go into the Sagrario chapel of the Asunción and work out why Cordoban Baroque is spoken of separately

Walk the Barrio de la Villa, the whitewashed medieval quarter on the edge of the cliff

Find out where the money came from: silk, taffeta and velvet sold as far as the Indies in the 18th century

Work out why it is called the city of water once you have found how many springs rise around it

Priego is called the city of water for the springs that rise all round it, and the jewel of Cordoban Baroque for what it built with the money. In the 18th century, after the Moriscos were expelled from the Puerta Granada quarter, it became one of the most important silk centres in Spain, selling taffeta and velvet to Seville, Málaga, Navarre, Portugal, France and the Indies — and that money paid for the churches. The Fuente del Rey has well over a hundred spouts. It sits in the middle of the Sierras Subbéticas, on the Route of the Caliphate.

Priego de Córdoba: Baroque and Water

Taste a Montilla fino against a Jerez fino and work out that one of them has had nothing added

Work out why: Pedro Ximénez on this albariza reaches enough alcohol on its own to carry the flor

Find out where the word amontillado comes from

Go into a bodega and find the tinajas, which are earthenware rather than oak

Find out who the Gran Capitán was and why Ferdinand the Catholic knocked the castle down in 1508

Montilla-Moriles makes wines that look like sherry, taste like sherry and are aged in a solera like sherry — and are not fortified, because the Pedro Ximénez grown on this albariza reaches enough alcohol on its own to support the flor without help. The word amontillado is literally in the style of Montilla. The wines age in enormous earthenware tinajas as well as barrels. Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Gran Capitán who reinvented European infantry warfare, was born here, and Ferdinand the Catholic had the town's castle demolished in 1508 to punish the rebellion of the first Marquis of Priego.

Montilla: The Sherry That Is Not Fortified

Get to the Mirador de las Peñas and work out what National Geographic was looking at in 2015

Go into the Iglesia de la Encarnación, a round neoclassical church built on the model of the Pantheon

Climb to the Nasrid castle on the rock and find the church the Catholic Monarchs put inside it

Work out what the name means and whether the village lives up to it in January

Eat the local cheese and the morcilla, which is what the inland Granada kitchen runs on

In October 2015 National Geographic put Montefrío on a list of the ten best village views in the world, and the reason is a single composition: a round neoclassical church in the middle of the town, modelled on the Pantheon, with a Nasrid castle on a bare rock directly above it, and white houses filling everything between. The Catholic Monarchs built a church inside the castle after taking it, as they generally did. The name means exactly what it looks like — cold mountain.

Montefrío: Ten Best Views in the World

Go round a mantecado factory during the season, which runs roughly August to December

Work out what a mantecado actually is and where the recipe came from

Climb the Cerro de San Cristóbal to the Torre del Homenaje and the walls

Stand at the Balcón de Andalucía and work out how far you can see across the campiña

Taste a polvorón against a mantecado and work out the difference

Estepa makes mantecados and polvorones — the crumbly lard-and-flour sweets that Spain eats at Christmas — on an industrial scale, with a protected geographical indication and a season that effectively runs the town from August to December. The recipe came out of the convents. Above the town the Cerro de San Cristóbal has the Torre del Homenaje, the walls, and the Balcón de Andalucía, a viewpoint that on a clear day reaches a very long way across the campiña towards the Subbética.

Estepa: Mantecados and a Tower on a Hill

Walk the excavated streets inside the walls and work out that this was the whole town, not a garrison

Work out the dates: besieged 1340, starved into surrender 1341, front line until 1492, then gradually abandoned because it was no longer needed

Go into the abbey church and look down through the glass floor at the graves under it

Climb the keep for the view towards Granada, which is what this place was watching

Work out why the town moved downhill and what that tells you about what walls were for

Alfonso XI besieged Alcalá la Real in 1340 and it capitulated to hunger in 1341, becoming from then until 1492 one of Castile's principal frontier posts facing the Nasrid kingdom of Granada — and Castile paid for it generously, adding works such as the Torre Nueva. The whole medieval town lived inside the walls; once Granada fell, the fortress was let go and the population drifted down to the suburbs on the plain, so what you walk through now is the excavated street plan of a town that emptied itself. The church inside has a glass floor over the burials beneath it.

Alcalá la Real: A Frontier Fortress for Two Centuries

Walk up the old path from Poncebos, which is how the village was supplied for centuries

Take the funicular back down and work out what 402 metres of tunnel at 18.19% means

Work out what the funicular changed for fifty people, and what it may also have cost them

Walk up from Bulnes towards the Naranjo de Bulnes for the view of the face

Eat Cabrales in the village that is surrounded by the caves it is cured in

Bulnes has about fifty inhabitants and no road. For centuries the only way in was a steep path up from Poncebos, which is how everything the village used had to arrive. In the 1990s the Principality decided to end that isolation and bored a funicular through the Peña Maín: a tunnel climbing 402 metres at a gradient of 18.19%, opened in 2001, and by 2011 half a million people had used it. You can still walk the old path, and walking it is the point — it tells you what fifty people did every time they needed anything.

Bulnes: A Village Reached Through a Mountain

Find the Jabalquinto palace and look at the carved stone spikes covering its facade

Go into the cathedral and find Vandelvira's work inside an earlier building

Find the old university of 1538 and the classroom where Machado taught French

Work out why the town stopped in the 17th century and what that preserved

Baeza was listed by UNESCO together with Úbeda on 3 July 2003, and the two towns are usually done together, but Baeza is the quieter and in some ways the stranger of the pair: a university town from 1538, with a cathedral rebuilt by Andrés de Vandelvira, the Jabalquinto palace in Isabelline Gothic with a facade of carved stone spikes, and a compact grid of Renaissance buildings that stopped growing in the 17th century and never resumed. Antonio Machado taught French here from 1912 to 1919 after his wife died and wrote much of Campos de Castilla in the town.