Visit a leather workshop in Ubrique and see how the goods are made

Walk up to the Roman town of Ocuri at the Salto de la Mora

Walk the Roman road from Ubrique to Benaocaz

Find out how a mountain village became the centre of Andalusian leatherwork

Ubrique, a white town at the gateway to both the Grazalema and the Alcornocales natural parks, is the cradle of Andalusian leatherwork, and leather is still the heart of its economy. Rome brought it a period of prosperity: the remains of the Roman town of Ocuri lie a kilometre from the centre, at the Salto de la Mora, and a Roman road still links Ubrique to Benaocaz over the hill.

Ubrique: The Leather Town of the Sierra

Go in with the family who own it, which is how this cave has always been shown

Find the fish and the seal, and work out how odd they are this far from the sea and from Cantabria

Work out why Franco-Cantabrian style art here changed what was understood about the range of Palaeolithic art

Find out how it was discovered: a farmer after bat guano in 1905, following bats into a hole

Find out who Verner, Breuil and Obermaier were and what each of them did with the find

José Bullón Lobato was looking for bat guano to fertilise his rented fields in 1905 when he noticed bats coming out of a hole and went in. What he found was Palaeolithic parietal art in the Franco-Cantabrian style a very long way from where that style is supposed to be — deer, horses, fish, goats, bulls, a seal, a bison, abstract signs. Willoughby Verner, a retired British colonel living near Algeciras, heard about it in 1907, and Henri Breuil and Hugo Obermaier later studied it. The cave is still owned and shown by the Bullón family.

The Cave of La Pileta: Found by a Farmer After Guano

Climb to the tower on the summit and look down at the village and the reservoir together

Walk down into the Garganta Verde, the gorge below the village, which is the best walk in the Grazalema park

Swim in the reservoir from the village beach, which is what it is used for now

Drive the Puerto de las Palomas over to Grazalema, one of the best mountain roads in Andalusia

Walk into the Grazalema park behind, which is the wettest place in Spain

Zahara sits at 500 metres in the middle of the Sierra de Grazalema natural park, on the flank of the Sierra del Jaral between the Guadalete and the Bocaleones, with a tower on the summit and the Zahara-El Gastor reservoir below. It was an important Muslim strongpoint taken by the Christians in the Middle Ages, and the reservoir is modern. The combination of the three — tower, white village and water — is why this is one of the most photographed of the pueblos blancos, and the village also has a pinsapo garden in it, the ice-age fir the park is known for.

Zahara de la Sierra: A Village Under a Castle Over a Lake

Walk across Ronda's Puente Nuevo, built between 1751 and 1793 by José Martín de Aldehuela over the El Tajo gorge

Visit the Plaza de Toros de Ronda, built in 1784 and one of the oldest and best-preserved bullrings in Spain

Go down to the Arab baths below the old town, steam baths built on the Roman pattern

The pueblos blancos of the Serranía are whitewashed because lime kills the bugs and reflects the heat, and they sit on crags because that is where you put a town when the frontier between Christian and Muslim Spain ran through your valley for two hundred years. Ronda is split by the Tajo, a gorge a hundred metres deep, with the Puente Nuevo of 1751–1793 across it. Its bullring of 1784 is one of the oldest in Spain, and below the old town the Arab baths are the Muslims' adaptation of Roman ones — steam rooms rather than plunge pools.

Ronda: The Puente Nuevo Over the Tajo

Walk Cuevas del Sol and Cuevas de la Sombra and notice that the rock overhead is the roof, not a ceiling

Work out the difference from a real cave house: nothing here was dug out, the overhang was simply walled in

Climb to the castle keep above the gorge for the view down onto the roofs that are not roofs

Work out why one street gets sun and the other gets shade, and which one people eat on in August

Eat here — this is a serious pork and chorizo town under all that rock

Setenil is usually described as a cave village and it is not one, which is the interesting part. The houses under the Guadalporcún gorge are abrigos bajo rocas: the builders did not dig into the rock at all, they simply walled up the space under a natural overhang and ran the house lengthwise beneath it. The rock is the roof. The streets — Cuevas del Sol, Cuevas de la Sombra, Calle Mina, Calle Herrería — run along under the overhangs on both sides of the gorge.

Setenil de las Bodegas: Houses Under an Overhang

Climb to Olvera castle for the view over the white town

Cycle or walk the Vía Verde from Olvera through the tunnels

Reach the Peñón de Zaframagón and watch the griffon vultures on the rock

Find out why Olvera is the starting point of the Camino de la Frontera to Santiago

Taste the olive oil of the Sierra de Cádiz in Olvera

Olvera, one of the white towns of the Sierra de Cádiz, stands on its hill under a castle that Don Juan Manuel looked at in the summer of 1326 and decided not to attack. It is the end of the Vía Verde de la Sierra, just over 36 kilometres of the old Jerez–Almargen railway, turned into a path for walkers, cyclists and riders: 29 tunnels, the longest 990 metres, four viaducts and five stations. It was named the best greenway in Europe in 2005 and 2009. On the way it passes the Peñón de Zaframagón, a nature reserve since 1989 with the largest colony of griffon vultures in Andalusia — around 200 breeding pairs.

Olvera and the Vía Verde de la Sierra: 29 Tunnels and 200 Pairs of Vultures

Stand on the balcony of the Plaza del Cabildo and look straight down the cliff at the Guadalete

Work out what de la Frontera means, and what happened to the 1253 treaty that let the Moors stay

Find out that this was its own taifa from 1012 under a Berber ruler until Seville absorbed it in 1069

Walk the old town lanes, which are narrow enough that buses have to fold their mirrors in

Go into Santa María and San Pedro, the two churches that compete for the skyline

Arcos sits on a sandstone spur above a loop of the Guadalete with a sheer drop on one side, and it is the gateway to the route of the pueblos blancos. After the caliphate of Córdoba collapsed, the taifa of Arcos was proclaimed in 1012 under Ben Jazrum, a Berber; al-Mutadid of Seville swallowed it in 1069. Castile took it by treaty in 1253 on terms allowing any Moor who wished to stay — terms Alfonso X did not keep — and he retook it outright in October 1264 during the Mudéjar revolt. The Plaza del Cabildo at the top has the castle, the church of Santa María, the parador and a balcony straight over the drop.

Arcos de la Frontera: A Town on a Cliff

Walk the lanes of Peratallada round its castle

Climb up through the Gothic quarter of Pals to the Torre de les Hores

Buy Arròs de Pals, the rice grown in the fields below the village

Go to Peratallada's medieval market on the first weekend of October

Inland from the Costa Brava two medieval villages stand seven kilometres apart. Peratallada, first recorded for its 10th-century castle, was declared a historic-artistic ensemble as one of the most important and best preserved medieval centres in Spain, and holds a medieval market on the first weekend of October. Pals has a Gothic quarter of cobbled streets, pointed windows and stone balconies round the Romanesque Torre de les Hores, built between the 11th and 13th centuries, and the rice fields below it grow Arròs de Pals.