Spain, Alhama de Granada

Using the suspect walking book again, we tried a short easy walk ( for grannies and push chairs) on the other side of the mountain range. By now Vicky had left us and Rosie, Clare’s rather beautiful willowy daughter had joined us. She is definitely a spring chicken!

The drive up was spectacular with impressive twists and turns leading to a huge U-shaped pass between two craggy mountains. The mountain range itself reaches to just over 2000 meters at their highest point. To give some perspective Ben Nevis is 1345 meters so although there is no snow in these mountains, they are very impressive. My ears were crackling constantly as we climbed to reach the pass.

On the journey up I was slightly worried about Margaret who gets car sick but has, to sit in the back as two of our group are over six foot tall and we all seem to have opposing temperature requirements. Chris carries extra clothing because she gets so cold and a couple of us seem to have our internal central heating permanently on high. We coped and Margaret wasn’t sick so, all was well!

We had something of a surprise on the other side of the U-shaped pass. It was not the drop we had been expecting or the continuing arid landscape but a huge green fertile area with lots of green leafy crops growing. Looking at the area later on a geology site I could see it was a basin and had at one time been a lake.

The landscape then became more arid again. And hilly before we descended the narrow streets into Alhama de Granada or in Moorish “The Bath of Granada”. It’s name comes form hot springs that are now too expensive to visit owing to the fact a rather exclusive hotel sits on top of them! We are nowhere near Granada!

Anyway that is not why we came, we came to walk in and around the gorge. With slight nervousness at not being sure if the description of the walk is accurate we set off down into the gorge and up the other side. The gorge was made by the Rio Alhama running through it and at the bottom it was shaded and had a slightly mysterious feel about it. There was an abandoned turn of the century building and caves that had at one time stored grain and at another stored prisoners during the Spanish Civil War.

We climbed out of the gorge to walk along the top. We had a long delay while we were trying to work out what path we were following as it just wasn’t clear in the book. Once sorted and agreed between Rosie, Margaret and I, we carried on. It was very hot so we went slowly, stopping and drinking our water regularly. Chris has a “camelback” water carrier so she bites on a tube leading to her back pack to get the water. We were all puffing and panting when she reminded us that one of our regular walkers in the UK Derek, he thought her drinking tube, was an oxygen tube!

We got stunning views of the gorge and then came across an olive grove with a carpet of poppies. Being careful of snakes, Rosie and I walked across to get a better look.

Along the road a mile or so, we began to descend down to where we would reach the bottom of the ravine when Rosie noticed on her phone a restaurant. Although we had lunch with us, a cold drink was very tempting. We sat in a shaded area and ordered cold drinks and with it came a gratis potato and shellfish dish which was delicious!!

Continuing our walk back along the gorge was pleasant stopping at a little church hewn into the rocks for our lunch, (which we shared with a couple of cats).

From the book we were using the timings were accurate but it still lacked considerable detail and the map was just not to scale but we couldn’t get lost or feel too far off the beaten track this time.

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This was a good walk and eventually we made it back to the town and drove back through the mountains, back to the coast just in time for another dip in the sea!