1 Hello, my name is Lidia and I lived in this village in the first century A.D.

I lived here with my parents and my two brothers. I loved going to the river in the summer days.

Hello, my name is Ahmed and I lived in this village in the tenth century. I lived here with my parents and my sister. I loved watching the animals in the fields.

2 Nowadays, our village is called Santa María de Trassierra and people come here by car or bus. In the past, we used to walk for a few hours to go down to Córdoba.

If you come with us, we will show you the places around the village. These places were very important for our lives.

Follow us, listen to the information and enjoy the school trip!

3

This is the first important place in the visit. It is the only church in the village and it is famous because the poet Luis de Góngora was the priest here in the XVIIth century. At that time he was writing his Soledades.

Back to school, ask your Spanish teacher for more details about Góngora and other poets from the XXth century.

4

We are now in the banks of a stream. There is a lot of vegetation and it is very cool in the hot days.

Nowadays, people call it Arroyo del Molino and it is very popular for visitors.

Listen to your teacher and learn the names of the most common trees in these stream banks.

5

This spot is very popular. People call it Baños de Popea and we came here very often to swim in the pools.

On your right, there is an old building. It is a mill from the Xth century; a flour mill. People brought their grain here and took flour home for their bread. Did you see the weir to bring water into the mill?

In class, ask your teacher how a mill works.

6 We are now in the river banks. Nowadays, this river is called Guadiato and there is an important dam a few kilometers heading north. The river was very important in our lives. If you follow the river upstream, you will find a Roman bridge and another bridge from the times of the Caliphate. If you keep calm and quiet you will see and hear many birds: for example, robins.

7 Here, at this point in your walk, you have reached another popular stream. In your century, people call it Bejarano. It always has plenty of water; even in the driest summers. Now we are climbing up the path that goes parallel to the river and you are going to find a few surprises. Vegetation is so abundant that you feel as if you were in a tunnel.

8

This is the mine. Many boys and young men from my village worked in this mine. They mined lead and copper and sent the minerals to the city. They used the Roman road that went into Cordoba to transport the mineral into the city.

Working in the mine was hard and dangerous. In the mine there are horizontal tunnels to extract the mineral and vertical shafts for ventilation.

Ask your teacher what objects people did with lead and copper in the past.

9

We are now in a different mill. Here they used to beat the copper. This building is now called Molino del Martinete. Some centuries later they used it as a cotton mill.

Somewhere up the hill there was a pool to bring the water into the mill.

10 This is part of the causeway from the road that took us into the city. Roads were very important in the Roman Empire. Some roads were public, others were private and also there were some smaller district roads. Road construction was a good example of engineering.

Find out what the four sections of a road are: pavimentum, rudus, nucleus and statumen.

11 This is the third mill. This building is now called La fábrica de paños but it is only about 150 years old. There was no building in this place when we lived here.

With that name, can you think about what type of mill it was?

12

This is a very beautiful spot, with this waterfall. It always has water running, even when it rains very little in the summer. This stream is again El Bejarano. Do you remember when we saw its waters first?

We are now very close to its spring. A spring is the place where water comes out of the ground and starts flowing down. This spring was very important in the past because it provided fresh water for the city and also for Madinat Al-Zahra. For this purpose, people built a long aqueduct.

Did you see a part of it when you were coming here in the bus?

En el Bejarano

La tarde aquí sin copa donde ría sueño o amor a tu alma sedienta, cuya sed ni áureo vino ni alta luna apagar pueden. Sólo de un confuso ruiseñor se derrama en melodía pena igual a la tuya. Aquí, a tus pies, desborda el arroyo su música por los avellanares, pero aún más nocturno es el recuerdo por donde tu alma divaga, no esparciendo lo mismo que el torrente su música por frescas galerías, Si no umbrosa y callada, sin un rayo de luna. Y escuchar el arroyo; en él te reconoces; el arroyo que no atiende a un canto y se cree a sí mismo oscuro y mudo.

Ricardo Molina

13 We are getting now near the end of the trip. Nowadays, this spot is called La fuente del elefante. When I was a child, there was a sculpture with the shape of an elephant, which is somewhere else in Córdoba. Do you know where it is?

The statue of this elephant is very important because in our Muslim culture animals are not usually represented. We have very few examples: the small deer from Madinat Al-Zahra or the lions from the Alhambra.

I used to come here very often because it was a cool place and water from this spring made the orchards very fruitful.

14

This is now the end of the trip. We hope that you have enjoyed the hiking and you have liked our village.

When you get to school, get ready to make a presentation about everything you have learnt.

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FIELD TRIP NOTES

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FIELD TRIP NOTES

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FIELD TRIP NOTES

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FIELD TRIP NOTES