Segura de la Sierra is a village that looks like a stage set, and it is real. It sits on a conical hill above the olive groves of the upper Guadalimar valley, crowned by a castle, with narrow lanes of whitewashed houses winding up to the walls, and from the top the view takes in miles of olives, pine-covered ridges and distant sierras. The castle was a stronghold of the Order of Santiago, the knightly order that held much of this frontier in the Middle Ages. It has a Moorish bath house, restored and open to the public, a bullring built into the rock, and a medieval keep.
The village lies in the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas Natural Park, the largest protected area in Spain, a UNESCO biosphere reserve with deep valleys, big forests of black pine and a rich wildlife. Red deer, mouflon and ibex live in the park, and the Guadalquivir, the great river of Andalusia, rises in the Cazorla mountains close by. Griffon vultures and bearded vultures can be seen over the crags. In the autumn the sound of rutting stags echoes in the woods.
The nearby shelters, including La Viñuela, belong to the painted rock tradition of the Levantine art, part of the 1998 UNESCO listing of the Mediterranean Basin rock art of the Iberian Peninsula. Sites of this kind are fragile, and the ones open to the public are managed by local guides, so ask at the village or in Nerpio, and never touch the walls or look for paintings without advice.
The ride is unforgettable. Roads from Orcera and Hornos wind through olive terraces and then climb into the pine forests with plenty of bends, and views of the plain below. Surfaces are mostly decent, with some rough patches, and traffic is light except in the hunting season and weekends. Fuel is a worry: Huéscar, about 39 km away, is the nearest town in the data, though Orcera and Santiago de la Espada have some services, so fill the tank. Spring and autumn are best, with clear air and colour. The local olive oil is excellent, and game stews and the regional dish of andrajos, a stew with flat dough, are good meals.