villages

‘The wind is in from Africa / Last night I couldn’t sleep.” Joni Mitchell has ear-wormed her way into my head as my wife and I step out from Zahara de la Sierra into the mountains of Sierra de Grazalema natural park. The Africa bit probably comes from yesterday’s visit to Zahara’s castle museum. Here, high above the tiled terracotta mosaic of village rooftops, we learned how the recapture of this picturesque hill town was a turning point in the Reconquista – the military campaign of the 1400s that saw the Catholics retake southern Spain after seven centuries of Moorish control. As for sleep deprivation, I may just have overdone it on last night’s tapas.

Either way, Africa feels present as we tramp through the countryside of Andalucía, if only in the wildlife. The painted lady butterflies drifting over the flower-spangled verges, the turtle doves purring from the olive groves and the booted eagle drifting overhead: all are summer visitors recently blown in from the great continent to our south.

It’s day two of our White Villages of the Ronda Mountains walking tour, a self-guided seven-day route from On Foot Holidays that explores this alluring corner of southern Spain. We arrived yesterday by bus from Málaga, winding up through the mountains until the whitewashed dwellings of Zahara appeared like teeth in the hillside ahead. This was the first of the week’s four pueblos blancos, all tucked picturesquely into the natural park’s rugged 51,695 hectares (127,740 acres) of limestone peaks and serpentine river valleys.

I’ve walked with On Foot before, so the routine is familiar: water bottles and packed lunches stashed in daypacks, laminated map around neck on lanyard and route app open on phone (belt-and-braces navigation). Best of all, our luggage is already wending its way by taxi to the next destination.

The conditions couldn’t be more perfect. The hillsides burst with blossom and birdsong, the May temperature is a pleasant mid-20s (midsummer out here would be punishing), and the peaks stand proud against the clear blue sky. It’s hard to believe February brought such heavy rains that much of our route was then impassable – and some areas of the park were affected by wildfires later in the summer.

But each month here has its own character. September/October – also prime walking season – sees the chestnuts and cork oak forests turn russet and gold, and the spring irises and orchids replaced by the post-summer bloom of wild asparagus and autumn crocus. Overhead, those booted eagles will be massing for their return journey – along with bee-eaters, honey buzzards and other winged voyagers – back to Africa.

Today’s hike takes us south towards Grazalema: pueblo blanco number two. We skirt a reservoir then wind along a lush river valley, nightingales serenading us from the oleander thickets, and by late morning are rising into the mountains, the vista gaining grandeur as we gain height.

Lunch is in a high meadow, where we unwrap our bocadillos while bees buzz and butterflies busy themselves among the blooms. Afternoon brings a long uphill slog, then finally a cool descent through shady pines to sleepy Grazalema. Another 11 miles (18km) under our belts.

We stay two nights in Grazalema at the Hotel la Mejorana, meeting wild ibex on a mountain circuit high above town, and eating at the cosy Cádiz el Chico restaurant, where a menu featuring partridge and wild boar (though, thankfully, not ibex) reflects the region’s hunting traditions. At night, the cobbled streets are quiet beneath a canopy of stars.

Benaoján, the third of our pueblos blancos, lies about 16 miles to the south-east. We exit Grazalema early in the morning, beneath the Los Peñascos mirador. Roosting griffon vultures line the cliffs like pterodactyls, warming up in the morning sun before, one at a time, flapping off on table-top wings for another day combing the plains.

Our route leads down through the oak woods before rising again into the hills. Here we enter a limestone wonderland, the karst formations sculpted by wind and rain into Henry Moore-like statues. Bee-eaters dart overhead, their liquid chirrups audible long before we lay eyes on them. A passing walker greets us with a cheery “Buen camino!” He’s returning with his father to see the farmhouse where they grew up. We find Dad sitting on a nearby rock, devouring an empanada. They’re the only other walkers we meet all day.

Our hideaway at Benaoján is the Molino del Santo hotel, where we dine beside a chuckling stream on a terrace crowded with potted geraniums. From here, it takes us two hours to hike to the Cueva de la Pileta, an immense cave system discovered in 1905 when a local farmer spotted bats streaming from a fissure in the hillside.

Local guide Ainhoa Bullón leads us down cool, narrow passages into measureless caverns, her thin torch beam illuminating flowstone formations as enormous and elaborate as a Gaudí cathedral – formed, she explains, by the drip-drip of lime at the rate of 1cm every 400 years. The farthest recesses hold exquisite shamanic rock art, some more than 25,000 years old. Ainhoa overflows with information, talking us through the cave’s successive ages of antiquity, from Neanderthal to Neolithic. Most important, she delivers us safely back to the blazing sunshine outside.

Our week ends at Ronda, perched atop the precipitous El Tajo gorge. The celebrated clifftop town seems to beckon us onward like some mythical sky citadel as we tramp our final kilometres towards it. Below the cliffs, we find ourselves back in tourist land, sharing the steep climb to the top with a gaggle of selfie-snapping day trippers.

We make it, slumping at the first available cafe table to lever off boots, fold away the map and order a celebratory cold cerveza. Tomorrow, we catch our bus back to Málaga. For now, a final night lies ahead, with a stirring panorama from our room at the Parador de Ronda and the promise of a slap-up meal down in the old town. Our beers arrive, and any lingering strains of Joni are soon lost to a busker’s volley of flamenco guitar.

The trip was provided by On Foot Holidays. It costs from £985pp for a seven-night self-guided route in Grazalema natural park, ending in Ronda; five-, six- and eight-night routes also available. The walking season is February-May and September-December (April, May, September and October being optimum)

FIVE fantastic Spanish holiday resorts have topped a list of our favourite holiday destinations this summer.

Online travel giant LoveHolidays studied the reviews from thousands of customers who have travelled since the schools broke up.

Families were asked to rate their hotels out of five across seven key criteria: holiday experience, location, service, value for money, cleanliness, facilities and food and drink.

The Costa Dorada resort of Cambrils took the top spot with a score of 4.55 out of five, followed by Santa Ponsa in Majorca; Puerto del Carmen in Lanzarote; Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria and Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol.

“Families have a shortlist of destinations they know and trust,” says Al Murray from loveholidays.

“But our ranking shows some of the strongest hotel experiences are happening in resort towns people might be less familiar with.

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“That’s why the customer reviews we’re now sharing on our hotel listings are so useful. They give people access to real-time feedback from other LoveHolidays travellers, making the all-important decisions of where to go and which hotel to pick that bit easier.”

Here, we’ve dug into the details as to why each destination scored so highly – and there’s a great deal for each one so you can try yourself this autumn.

Cambrils, Costa Dorada

This former fishing village has a strong reputation for seafood and Catalan cuisine so it’s no surprise it scored well for food and drink, earning an average of 4.53 from guests.

Families were also impressed with the location of hotels in the area, with a score of 4.76, and service, at 4.63.

Seven nights’ B&B at the 3* H10 Cambrils Playa is from £279pp including flights from Luton on October 17.

Santa Ponsa, Majorca

Families gave hotels in the town 4.51 and scored the destination high for holiday experience (4.61) and location (4.78) thanks to its sheltered bay, walkable seafront and easy access to Palma.

Seven nights’ self-catering at the 3* Residence Mallorca Portofino by Pierre et Vacances is from £179pp including Stansted flights on October 15.

Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote

The resort’s mix of beaches, marina and seafront restaurants scored highly at 4.41 with hotels in the town rated well on location (4.56), holiday experience (4.53) and service (4.51).

Seven nights’ self-catering at the 3* Hyde Park Lane is from £219pp including flights from Southend on December 2.

Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria

With an overall score of 4.40, hotels here stood out for food and drink, earning the highest score at 4.75, reflecting its growing reputation for quality dining.

Seven nights’ self-catering at the 3* Holiday Club Puerto Calma is from £189pp including Stansted flights on September 16.

Fuengirola, Costa del Sol

Fuengirola scored 4.34 and hotels were rated well across the board, with strong numbers for holiday experience (4.34), cleanliness (4.60) and location (4.46).

Seven nights’ room-only at the 3* Ilunion Miramar is from £179p including flights from Luton on October 27.

Prices may not include luggage or transfers. See loveholidays.com.

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

There has been a harbour in the village of Carnlough since the late 1700s, but the one standing today dates to 1853 (Game of Thrones fans may recognise it as the Braavos canal). It was built on the orders of the Marchioness of Londonderry to transport limestone from her quarries – the town hall’s Heritage Hub tells the full story. The old railway line between the quarry and harbour is now a footpath with panoramic views, leading to Cranny Falls. The harbour is the focal point of the village, which stands at the foothills of Glencoy – one of the nine glens, or glacial valleys, of Antrim – on Carnlough Bay. It bustles with local fishers, and boat trips set sail daily (£10 adults, £6 children; trips last 45 minutes). The Twilight coffeeshop, directly across from the harbour, serves brunch and has bunkhouse accommodation upstairs (sleeping 14). The recently refurbished Harbourview hotel offers more than 200 Irish whiskeys and hosts an annual whiskey festival (doubles from £120 B&B).

Solva, Pembrokeshire

Solva’s ancient harbour is at the bottom of a steep-sided valley on St Brides Bay, a few miles from St David’s. At high tide, it is popular with paddleboarders, but at low tide it becomes a huge stretch of sand, with the River Solva meandering down the middle. Then, there are rock pools and caves to explore; prime fishing, crabbing and shrimping spots; and safe, shallow places to swim. The village is split into Lower Solva, by the harbour, and Upper Solva – there are fantastic views over both ends from the Gribin headland. Cafe on the Quay and the Harbour Inn have outdoor tables overlooking the water; the Hats & Barrels serves fresh fish, and seasonal lobster and crab; and the Cambrian Inn is a restaurant with five rooms (doubles from £140 B&B).

Craster, Northumberland

While Craster’s natural haven has been used by fishers for centuries, today’s harbour was built in 1906 as a memorial to a member of the Craster family and has the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, a mile’s (1.6km) walk away up the coast as a backdrop. Craster is perhaps best known for its kippers, and L Robson & Sons has been producing them at its smokehouse overlooking the harbour since 1856. They are sold in the shop next door, while the Piper’s Pitch hut serves them in a bun, and the Jolly Fisherman pub turns them into paté and puts them in a scotch egg. The Cottage Inn, just outside Craster, has 10 rooms (doubles from £105 room only), and the Dunstanburgh Castle Inn in neighbouring Embleton has 16 (doubles from £120 B&B). The market town of Alnwick is about seven miles away.

Brixham, on Devon’s south coast, is probably the county’s best-known harbour town – but the village of Clovelly, on the north coast, is well worth seeking out, too. It was once the property of William the Conqueror, and is still privately owned today (entry is £10.90 adults; £6.25 children). The tiny harbour stands at the foot of a 122-metre cliff, reached via the steep, cobbled main street (known as Up-along or Down-along). Cars are not allowed, so goods are transported by sledges and donkeys. The Red Lion hotel, right on the quay, has 17 rooms, all with sea views (doubles from £225 B&B); the restaurant serves dishes such as wild hake and local lobster, while the snug bar offers haddock and chips. The Fisherman’s Cottage & Kingsley Museum is a 1930s time capsule, and there are annual festivals celebrating seaweed, seafaring and seafood.

Staithes, North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire is not short of busy harbour towns and fishing villages: see Scarborough, Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay. But Staithes, a little further north, is less well known. The name means “landing place” in Old English; Vikings landed here, and it was once one of the busiest fishing ports in the north-east. Today, there are still a handful of cobles (a traditional fishing vessel), plus boats running wildlife-watching trips, from which minke whales can be seen in August and September. The village is a steep jumble of cottages (largely white-washed and red-roofed, with the occasional electric blue pile), threaded with cobbled snickets (narrow alleys). The Cod & Lobster pub is right on the harbour wall; and the Endeavour B&B (refurbished in 2022) has four rooms, one with harbour views (doubles from £120 B&B). There is an annual arts festival (this year running 11-13 September), and visitors can walk a mile or so along the Cleveland Way to the ruined harbour at the abandoned hamlet of Port Mulgrave.

From mighty Falmouth to minuscule Mousehole, harbour hunters are spoiled for choice in Cornwall. But pretty Porthleven, on the Lizard peninsula, tends to have fewer crowds. Its double harbour, which opened in 1825, is said to have been built by French prisoners of war after the battle of Waterloo. It is lined with pubs, restaurants and galleries; there is a craft market most days from Easter to the end of October, and a food festival in April. The 17th-century Ship Inn straddles the harbour and the waters of Mount’s Bay; the Mussel Shoal is a seafood shack right on the harbour head; and Kota Kai serves fusion food such as Cornish fish and chips with katsu curry sauce, wasabi tartare, Asian slaw and pea puree. The Harbour Inn is a recently refurbished pub with 15 rooms (doubles from £110 B&B).

Lyme Regis’s harbour includes the Cobb, a breakwater and jetty. The first written mention of it was in 1328, when it was damaged by storms, but today’s Cobb was built from blocks of Portland stone in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It is on the west side of the town (known locally as the Pearl of Dorset), so is great for a sunset stroll. You can often see seals in the harbour and dolphins just out to sea; there are daily boat trips in late spring and summer. The beaches are fertile ground for fossil hunters – especially at Monmouth, to the west of the Cobb, and East Cliff, to the east of the town – and have thrown up many amazing discoveries, including an ichthyosaurus excavated by the paleontological pioneer Mary Anning in 1812. The Cobb Arms is the closest pub to the harbour and has three rooms (doubles £155 B&B); while the Harbour Inn, a tiny bit farther north by the beach, serves Lyme Bay seafood.

This market town on the west bank of the River Lymington, at the edge of the Solent, was first mentioned in the Domesday Book, became a hotbed for salt manufacture in the medieval era and later a shipbuilding centre in the 19th century. Today, it is a yachting hub, with two marinas as well as the old town quay. Near the Royal Lymington Yacht Club are the town’s seawater baths – established in 1833 and still open for swimmers (plus paddleboarding and inflatable obstacle courses). There is a lively market along the high street on Saturdays; while waterfront pubs and restaurants include the Ship Inn and The Haven, and the recently reopened Mayflower, set a little back near the seawater baths, which has seven rooms (doubles from £100 B&B). The Wightlink ferry port is just outside the town at Lymington Pier, taking passengers to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, another historic harbour town (with a crossing of about 40 minutes).

Plockton, a planned harbour village built to support the herring industry in the early 1800s, is known as the Jewel of the Highlands. It sits in a sheltered bay on the banks of Loch Carron, with a mild climate that allows incongruous-looking palm trees to thrive, and wooded hills beyond. Visitors can buy fresh fish and prawns off the pier when the boats come in at about 3pm; go on sea-kayak tours and seal-watching trips (from spring until the end of October); and watch the annual summer regatta in July. The Plockton Inn serves local langoustines and other seafood; the Plockton hotel has six rooms with loch views and five overlooking the gardens (doubles £180 B&B); and the bunkhouse by the railway station has budget beds (£20pp, discounts for groups). It is about an hour’s drive over the bridge to the Isle of Skye and on to its pastel-painted harbour capital, Portree.

Police say three villages and a mosque were attacked, and worshippers kidnapped in central Niger State.

Armed men have kidnapped dozens of people during an attack on a mosque and surrounding villages in Nigeria’s central Niger State, survivors and police officials say.

The raiders stormed Kpenya Mosque in the Dekara district of Borgu Local Government Area at around 2pm (13:00 GMT) on Friday, after first attacking the villages of Gidan-Zana and Kpenya, police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun said on Saturday.

Abiodun told the Reuters news agency that police were aware of the kidnappings but had not received reports of anyone being killed, and that a “joint security detachment has been deployed to the area for assessment and rescue operations”.

He said police could not yet confirm the number of people who were taken.

Local residents told Reuters that more than 60 worshippers were kidnapped, but the figure could not be independently verified.

Separately, residents told the AFP news agency that people were also killed, another claim that could not immediately be confirmed.

Jibril Ahmad, a survivor of the assault on Dekara, blamed members of the Lakurawa armed group.

“Soon after finishing the normal Friday prayer, the armed group of Lakurawa, in their hundreds, wielding guns, knives and machetes, began to attack us,” Ahmad told AFP, claiming that people were “slaughtered”.

During the attack, a third group, Mahmuda, intervened and clashed with the kidnappers, allowing some abductees to escape, he said.

Federal lawmaker Jafaru Mohammed told AFP that several nearby villages were also struck.

“Some members of the Mahmuda group were against the doctrine of the Lakurawa, and when they heard of what the Lakurawa were doing, they fought them,” Mohammed said.

The attack unfolded in a region near Nigeria’s western border with Benin that has seen growing activity from local armed groups and fighters from the neighbouring region, even as the country’s 17-year armed rebellion remains concentrated in the northeast.

The violence in Niger State continued into Saturday. Resident Abdullahi Ahmad said the group returned to the area to seize more people as a “bargaining chip” in advance of an expected troop deployment, and planted landmines on the road out of Dekara.

“A man and his family who were fleeing the town yesterday were killed when their car hit a landmine planted by the terrorists. Everyone is living in fear,” he said.

Mass abductions have been a hallmark tactic of the country’s armed groups and have evolved into a lucrative, multimillion-dollar industry involving networks of both ideological and nonideological gangs across Nigeria’s northwest and central regions.

For years, the day in Kulak ended when the generator powered down. Like thousands of villages across Iraq, this small farming community in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region lived to the faltering rhythm of an erratic power supply: a few hours of electricity, then the water pumps stopped, refrigerators warmed and children put down their books.

Today, Kulak runs on the sun. Solar panels harness its energy, batteries store the excess and residents have power 24/7. The change is visible beyond the homes: water pumps keep running, and cold storage gives farmers more control over when they sell their harvest.

This is the part of the energy transition the global climate conversation too often overlooks. Solar hardware is cheap; the world has learned how to install it. What matters is what comes after the panels go up: building the local capacity to keep the systems running and using reliable power to support farms, livelihoods and communities.

The energy transition will not be won in conference halls. It will be won, or lost, in places like Kulak.

Iraq’s rural energy crisis

Iraq’s energy story is usually told as a paradox. It is one of the world’s great oil producers, yet rural communities still endure daily power cuts. Summers now regularly push past 50 degrees, and the United Nations ranks Iraq among the nations most vulnerable to climate change. Drought has emptied farmland. Heat has made whole regions harder to live in. Rural families face a quiet, grinding choice between staying on land that can no longer sustain them or joining the drift towards overcrowded cities.

These pressures do not respect provincial boundaries. They are shared across Iraq, from the marshes of the south to the mountains of the north. They demand responses that work for the whole country.

For remote communities, decentralised power should not simply be treated as a stopgap while they wait for the grid. It can be part of the long-term answer.

Beyond electrification

Kulak is one of five villages in the Kurdistan region electrified through a solar initiative that pairs new infrastructure with local training and agricultural development. Residents are trained to operate and maintain their own systems, while research is under way into how reliable power can support local production.

Energy is treated not as a gift to be received but as an asset to be managed. That means looking beyond electricity itself to what it can enable: cold storage that allows farmers to hold their harvest for better prices, irrigation that no longer depends on diesel and processing that adds value before crops ever leave the village.

That distinction matters, because the graveyard of development is full of well-intentioned infrastructure. Anyone who has worked in this field has seen the solar array gathering dust because no one was trained to fix an inverter, or the water project abandoned when the foreign NGO moved on.

Sustainability is not a slogan; it is a design choice. Building local capability into a project from day one is the difference between a photo opportunity and a future.

Building the transition from the ground up

There is a broader argument here for the climate movement.

The energy transition is overwhelmingly narrated from the top down: through COP plenaries, G7 communiques and the financing pledges of wealthy nations, many of them unmet. Yet for hundreds of millions of people in the Global South, the transition will arrive, if it arrives at all, through decentralised solutions built close to the ground.

Rural Iraq will not wait decades for grid expansion to reach every valley. It does not have to. Distributed solar suits these communities better than centralised generation ever did, while local institutions can move at a speed that multilateral programmes rarely match.

There is also a quieter point about who gets to act on climate.

The prevailing image of climate action in the Middle East is the megaproject: vast desert solar farms, futuristic cities and sovereign wealth funds. Those have their place. But electrifying farming villages one by one represents a different kind of ambition, one rooted in the belief that Iraqis themselves, in all their diversity, can build the country’s energy future rather than wait for it to be delivered.

Local involvement matters particularly in places where reliable electricity is tied not only to household comfort but to whether farms can irrigate crops, preserve produce and remain economically viable.

Iraq has thousands of rural communities, and scaling this model will require partners, patient financing and supportive policy at every level of government. The agricultural research is promising but young.

On my last visit to Kulak, I was struck less by the panels than by what surrounded them: the cold store, the working pumps, the sense of a community planning for next season rather than next month.

The lights staying on is the least of it. What has really been switched on is the future tense.

If Iraq’s energy transformation is built like this across the whole country, village by village and from the ground up, it will be more durable than anything imposed from above. That means investing not only in the systems themselves, but in the people who will maintain them and the farms, businesses and livelihoods that reliable power can support.

The world’s climate diplomats could do worse than pay attention.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.