If you take the autopista route, it's 546 km of stress-free driving all the way to the delightful Portuguese town of Evora. Apart, that is, from the shock of the toll fees. Which must rival the per-kilometre levels of the extortion demanded between Vigo and Pontevedra.

Then it's another 370 km of almost equally traffic-free driving down to Cordoba. Where the temperature gauge, on March 3, read 33 degrees as we drove around town in search of a well-hidden hotel. But, truth to tell, it was nowhere near this as we enjoyed walking round a city not yet overwhelmed by this year's tourists. Though it was nippy in the Mezquita itself. On this, I will content myself with saying it defies belief that any Spaniard would have difficulty seeing this marvel as part of his/her heritage. And I don't mean the Christian accretions.

The Cathedral authorities provide a leaflet in several languages but its tone is surprisingly churlish -"Thus the beauty of the cathedral does not reside in its architectural splendour but in the apostolic succession of the bishops as a symbol of Christ's pastoral service and the unity of the Church, founded upon the word of the Lord, the sacraments and the community of believers . . . . . It is the Church, through its Cathedral Chapter, which has made it possible to keep the former mosque of the Western Caliphate from becoming a heap of ruins." To say nothing, of course, of responsibility for the desecration later acknowledged by the man who authorised it - Carlos V.

In his classic book The Road to Oxiana, Robert Byron comments that 'The Persians have a social ease'. This, of course, reminded me of the Spanish. And of my fortune in living in both cultures. A thought that seems particularly apt on the day I've had the immense pleasure of seeing wonderful examples of the art that links them.

Apart from the Mezquita, the most amazing thing about this city is that even here Spanish people ask me for directions. To said architectural marvel, as it happens.