Location - Granada
I had followed my fab friend Giles who has his own ski school and accomodation company here (www.sierraessence.com) from the pretty valley village of Pinos Genil just off the Sierra Nevada road down into Granada with the rough plan of going to an Arabian spa after briefly meeting an ex ski instructor employee of his called Tim first. Tim had travelled down from Nice via Barcelona by train and bus with his pot-head brother and sister in law, and by all accounts has a bit of a scatty reputation. As we started along the road that joins El Corte Inglés with the Plaza Reál, Tim rang as agreed to say he was “organised” and was told by Giles where we were and “to head along the pedestrian road and we´ll bump into each other”.
Well, Giles and I were deep in conversation about I have no idea what when I suddenly registered a man belting towards us at such a pace that you would imagine him being chased by the Terminator. He shot past us arms and legs flailing in all directions like a spastic octopus before Giles abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and turning around shouted “TIM!”. The whirling dervish cannoned against the wall, bouncing off it, spinning round in a circle, taking a martial arts stance wildly glared at us with the most shockingly blue bolting eyes set in the reddest eyelids making me immediately think he was absolutely out of his head on drugs …… But instead he dragged his totally shattered reputation for being “cool” back into harness, raked his fingers through his wiry unkempt hair and stammered out “It´s okay Man, it´s just I´ve been sitting down a lot these past couple of days and wanted to loosen myself up a bit ….” I burst out laughing and barely stopped for the rest of “the Tim Encounter”…….. !
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Las Alpujarras
5th August 2007 still staying at Pinos Genil in Granada .....
Well, today being Sunday, and my muscles protesting if anything rather more than they did yesterday, I decided to go easy on my body and instead be demanding of my car. I packed my sponge bag, bathers and a clean pair of knickers and headed off on what turned out to be an absolute marathon of everything!
For map enthusiasts, I took the A44 Granada-MotrSil road as far as Lanjarón which took me over a fantastic bridge with a ravine gaping beneath it and then through the Lecrin valley which I had heard of but didn´t think much of until I saw it – it gets a WOW! And then I was off the motorway and heading up into La Alpujarra – the range of Sierra Nevada mountain that cuts right across the southern side and where the famous Pueblos Blancos reside.
I think I started saying WOW after about the first half second, and carried on saying WOW for a very very very long time. I went through Lanjarón, Órgiva, Carataunas, Pampaneira. Then I diverted and visited Bubión and Capileira – these three last mentioned villages are the “famous” ones – and I think I understand why now ….. Rather than turning round, I carried on after a bit of a walk in Capileira searching for the Barranco (Ravine) where they do organised descents like I did the other day, but apparently every year, on the 5th August, all tourism offices close in the Sierra Nevada as they open the passes at the top – and trust me to pick that very day to go and find out information!!!
Not to be deterred, I continued – all the while I should add snaking around every single crevice of mountainside, because these villages are quite literally clinging for their very LIVES onto the sides of these mountains – and you drive for what seems like forever and then round a bend and WHAM there´s another one even more remote than the last, but still totally painted white with pots and pots of geraniums, ivies etc adorning the place (that`´s if you get out and have a look around). Well, I detoured for a little while at Mecina and walked down to Fondales and back up where I stumbled across what must have been a God-Arranged Appointment for me – because there, on the side of the road, were a bunch of bestomached Spaniards cooking a paella – but not just any ordinary paella – because this one was being cooked in a paella pan three metres wide!!! And being the quiet, retiring type, I asked if I could have a go cooking it – and they LET ME!! So I spent about half an hour or so shovelling red and green peppers and squid around with a very long handled giant paella spade as the several gallons of olive oil gently did their bit! It was AMAZING! Apparently, they were cooking enough paella to serve eight HUNDRED PEOPLE!!
The chief cook did invite me, on behalf of the village, to stay and eat with them, but I graciously declined mostly because I felt conspicuously alone and didn´t want to have the hassle of trying to “make friends” in order to change that …. I had already long since decided that these mountains, having always been my idea of heaven knowing nothing about them, were simply WAY TOO REMOTE for me to even think of living – and that actually I wanted to get on and get OUT OF THEM!!!
So I went through : Pitres – another blindingly white mountain hugging valley, then
Portugos ditto
Busquistar ditto
Trevélez ditto
Bérchules ditto
And by now, I was humming to myself the music from The Eagles song “Hotel California”, and, wondering why, I imagined myself singing the words – and I kept on humming the bit where he sings “You can check out any time you like but, you can NEVER LEAVE!!!”!!!!
I started to get claustrophobia !! GET ME OUT OF HERE!
So I changed cars – in my imagination, and swapped my Citröen C2 for a convertible Lambourghini, slammed it into second gear and drove like Schumacher on his last lap –through Narila, Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, alor, then Mecina, Marirena, and FINALLY to Laroles, where I started to feel less like a starved dog chained three inches away from a decent meal. The hysteria subsided KNOWING that I was now only (ha ha) 26 km from Puerto de la Ragua, where I had decided to make my escape from the interminable beauty of the Alpujarras. On and on … and then WOW! Going DOWNHILL!! It HAD to be a good sign!! I was, thankfully, still gloating with the achievement of cooking (some of the) paella for 800 people and so my hysteria melted quickly as La Calahorra came into view, with its beautiful renaissance castle high up on the hill – although my hysteria soon welled again as I saw the rain in the distance sheeting down beneath black clouds – and knowing how it rains here when it rains, I decided to get on to Guadix so that I could stop and either sleep through it or at least let it pass.
5 km the wrong side of Guadix, the rain and I met each other! It was fast, furious, torrential and utterly blinding. The droplets were bouncing 6 inches off the motorway and through the haze of it all I realised I was driving through scenery that I wanted to SEE! So I pulled off at Guadix, and instead of going into the city, followed my hunch and went to Benalúa – where I met the cave people! Benalúa is, visually speaking, hard to even believe. It is a lunar landscape of mountain and hill with nothing growing on or around, but with the hills having been made into houses – but CAVE HOUSES! It was like being on Wimbledon Common with the Wombles all coming out to play. The facades were beautiful – white, tiled, utterly “normal”, but then there was no “house” behind, just a monster great big hill with the house being inside it! I stopped for a coffee at the Cuevas La Granja – a sort of Cave Hotel – just to take a moment to take it all in.
I carried on off the beaten track and went down a road I will never forget to a village called Belerda de Guadix and that has to be a MUST DO drive for anyone anywhere near Granada – it is literally like driving along the moon with these amazing mountains with the strangest stringy structure – I tried to think of an analogy to help people visualise it and the best thing I can think of is from Pirates of the Carribean - Davy Jones´ beard!!
Well, after all that, I decided to get back here – I had been driving since 8.40am and it was by now about 6pm. So I headed down the A92 – another TOTAL WOW of a motorway right through the Sierra Nevada on the left and the Sierra Huétor on my right – on and on the last 50kms back to Granada, driving through the centre down “No Entry” roads trying to find something I recognised before finally making it back here at about 7pm!
The Upshot? Well, all I can say is I am glad that I didn´t move to the Alpujarras 10 years ago – the number of houses for sale there is just amazing – the word remote just simply doesn´t begin to conjure up the absolute isolation of the deepest villages – and to live there you would really have to think twice about whether you EVER wanted to come out and have contact with the real world because it was such a JOB to get either in or out!
Next stop : Córdoba!
Well, today being Sunday, and my muscles protesting if anything rather more than they did yesterday, I decided to go easy on my body and instead be demanding of my car. I packed my sponge bag, bathers and a clean pair of knickers and headed off on what turned out to be an absolute marathon of everything!
For map enthusiasts, I took the A44 Granada-MotrSil road as far as Lanjarón which took me over a fantastic bridge with a ravine gaping beneath it and then through the Lecrin valley which I had heard of but didn´t think much of until I saw it – it gets a WOW! And then I was off the motorway and heading up into La Alpujarra – the range of Sierra Nevada mountain that cuts right across the southern side and where the famous Pueblos Blancos reside.
I think I started saying WOW after about the first half second, and carried on saying WOW for a very very very long time. I went through Lanjarón, Órgiva, Carataunas, Pampaneira. Then I diverted and visited Bubión and Capileira – these three last mentioned villages are the “famous” ones – and I think I understand why now ….. Rather than turning round, I carried on after a bit of a walk in Capileira searching for the Barranco (Ravine) where they do organised descents like I did the other day, but apparently every year, on the 5th August, all tourism offices close in the Sierra Nevada as they open the passes at the top – and trust me to pick that very day to go and find out information!!!
Not to be deterred, I continued – all the while I should add snaking around every single crevice of mountainside, because these villages are quite literally clinging for their very LIVES onto the sides of these mountains – and you drive for what seems like forever and then round a bend and WHAM there´s another one even more remote than the last, but still totally painted white with pots and pots of geraniums, ivies etc adorning the place (that`´s if you get out and have a look around). Well, I detoured for a little while at Mecina and walked down to Fondales and back up where I stumbled across what must have been a God-Arranged Appointment for me – because there, on the side of the road, were a bunch of bestomached Spaniards cooking a paella – but not just any ordinary paella – because this one was being cooked in a paella pan three metres wide!!! And being the quiet, retiring type, I asked if I could have a go cooking it – and they LET ME!! So I spent about half an hour or so shovelling red and green peppers and squid around with a very long handled giant paella spade as the several gallons of olive oil gently did their bit! It was AMAZING! Apparently, they were cooking enough paella to serve eight HUNDRED PEOPLE!!
The chief cook did invite me, on behalf of the village, to stay and eat with them, but I graciously declined mostly because I felt conspicuously alone and didn´t want to have the hassle of trying to “make friends” in order to change that …. I had already long since decided that these mountains, having always been my idea of heaven knowing nothing about them, were simply WAY TOO REMOTE for me to even think of living – and that actually I wanted to get on and get OUT OF THEM!!!
So I went through : Pitres – another blindingly white mountain hugging valley, then
Portugos ditto
Busquistar ditto
Trevélez ditto
Bérchules ditto
And by now, I was humming to myself the music from The Eagles song “Hotel California”, and, wondering why, I imagined myself singing the words – and I kept on humming the bit where he sings “You can check out any time you like but, you can NEVER LEAVE!!!”!!!!
I started to get claustrophobia !! GET ME OUT OF HERE!
So I changed cars – in my imagination, and swapped my Citröen C2 for a convertible Lambourghini, slammed it into second gear and drove like Schumacher on his last lap –through Narila, Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, alor, then Mecina, Marirena, and FINALLY to Laroles, where I started to feel less like a starved dog chained three inches away from a decent meal. The hysteria subsided KNOWING that I was now only (ha ha) 26 km from Puerto de la Ragua, where I had decided to make my escape from the interminable beauty of the Alpujarras. On and on … and then WOW! Going DOWNHILL!! It HAD to be a good sign!! I was, thankfully, still gloating with the achievement of cooking (some of the) paella for 800 people and so my hysteria melted quickly as La Calahorra came into view, with its beautiful renaissance castle high up on the hill – although my hysteria soon welled again as I saw the rain in the distance sheeting down beneath black clouds – and knowing how it rains here when it rains, I decided to get on to Guadix so that I could stop and either sleep through it or at least let it pass.
5 km the wrong side of Guadix, the rain and I met each other! It was fast, furious, torrential and utterly blinding. The droplets were bouncing 6 inches off the motorway and through the haze of it all I realised I was driving through scenery that I wanted to SEE! So I pulled off at Guadix, and instead of going into the city, followed my hunch and went to Benalúa – where I met the cave people! Benalúa is, visually speaking, hard to even believe. It is a lunar landscape of mountain and hill with nothing growing on or around, but with the hills having been made into houses – but CAVE HOUSES! It was like being on Wimbledon Common with the Wombles all coming out to play. The facades were beautiful – white, tiled, utterly “normal”, but then there was no “house” behind, just a monster great big hill with the house being inside it! I stopped for a coffee at the Cuevas La Granja – a sort of Cave Hotel – just to take a moment to take it all in.
I carried on off the beaten track and went down a road I will never forget to a village called Belerda de Guadix and that has to be a MUST DO drive for anyone anywhere near Granada – it is literally like driving along the moon with these amazing mountains with the strangest stringy structure – I tried to think of an analogy to help people visualise it and the best thing I can think of is from Pirates of the Carribean - Davy Jones´ beard!!
Well, after all that, I decided to get back here – I had been driving since 8.40am and it was by now about 6pm. So I headed down the A92 – another TOTAL WOW of a motorway right through the Sierra Nevada on the left and the Sierra Huétor on my right – on and on the last 50kms back to Granada, driving through the centre down “No Entry” roads trying to find something I recognised before finally making it back here at about 7pm!
The Upshot? Well, all I can say is I am glad that I didn´t move to the Alpujarras 10 years ago – the number of houses for sale there is just amazing – the word remote just simply doesn´t begin to conjure up the absolute isolation of the deepest villages – and to live there you would really have to think twice about whether you EVER wanted to come out and have contact with the real world because it was such a JOB to get either in or out!
Next stop : Córdoba!
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