A bit of a trip inland today to avoid the coast for a bit, also because we couldn’t decide where to go! 🙄
Had to drain and fill the water first at some services which were on the road to Guadix. Passed through some spectacular scenery around the area known as Mini Hollywood where lots of the spaghetti western’s were filmed – it never fails to amaze us how weird and wonderful this area is with its lunar landscape.
We turned off before Guadix (Jo Gannon 😬) and parked on the edge of a little town with a castle called La Calahorra.
It was a bit of a scruffy car park so we decided not to leave the van and just had our lunch there, although it seems the castle only opens on Wednesdays anyway and NOT during siesta time 🤣
I’d let the side down by calling in the Panaderia for a baguette and coming back with two sugary buns. The baguettes were still in the oven, so not available for ten minutes, so I bought what I thought were two cobs …that flour on top was sugar!
The most obvious route back to the coast was now up and over the Sierra Nevada via the Puerto de La Ragua, at 2000 metres, this is Andalucia’s highest all-weather pass. We stopped for a walk at the top where 17°C felt proper cool but the clean fresh pine scented air was lovely. Didn’t really see any wildlife other than a few wild horses roaming around. One in particular was grazing all the picnic tables and wouldn’t leave one family alone until they gave him an apple!
The road down from the top was much longer than we remembered, it went on forever and we were both sick of the bends by the time we reached the coast. Struggled to find decent parking and still greenhouses everywhere. Eventually we found a big lay-bye on the old coast road with a lovely view.
Miraculously, an ibex has just walked up through the car park (camera not ready). Been all the way through that countryside and seen nothing then back to the coast and this happens!
