Beautiful Andalucia
Wow! We're loving Andalucia. Partly because of its stunning architecture, scenery and food but also because we have finally taken time to slooooooooow doooooown. Catching covid has also helped force our hand on this!
We headed south from Barcelona on the 5th January not realising that the 6th was El Dia del Reyes (que?) The Day of the Kings or 'Magi' is thought to be the day when the Three Kings arrived in Bethlehen and gave their presents to Jesus. This is the equivalent to our Christmas day and when most presents are exchanged - big event we should have known about... (C'mon who was in charge of festival research?!)
On the 5th we were staying in a car park on the edge of the town of Alginet, just south of Valencia, en route to Granada. Buzz went out looking for sports facilities, spoke to a local and came zipping back announcing that a big parade was about to start on the main street beyond the carpark. We hastily went out to watch and saw/heard a few seconds of parade drumming and then it stopped. The inflatable star was deflated next to us, a donkey was being led away to a trailer and we could just see a Mary & Joseph walking away in the opposite direction. The parade had just finished! Shame to have missed it but we chased the dispersing nativity characters back into town and felt a bit of Magi buzz... This was like Christmas eve...the bars were filling up and everyone was getting merry. We wandered back to the van happily thinking that if their Magi was indeed like our Christmas Day, the next day would be clear on the roads for onward travel...
Sure enough... Only fellow motorhomes and the odd lorry on an otherwise clear run to Grenada. What a beautiful drive...fruit trees everywhere! Then more mountainous as you climb and wind towards the Sierra Nevada... the first dustings of snow on some of the higher peaks. Then we started to see the trademark white settlements of Andalucia standing out against the orange glow of the earth.
We spent 2 nights in Grenada. I was keen to see the Alhambra but we couldn't book tickets till the second day. I thought of the snow nearby and found that we were only 30 mins drive from the Sierra Nevada ski resort... Time for a snow day!! Skiing is so blummin expensive, and we had none of the stuff with us, but just to be up in the snowy peaks, smelling the clear air and fooling about in heaps of snow was a great experience for the boys. We layered up in most of our clothes, plus full waterproofs and wellies and took to the slopes. We found a chairlift up to a hotel so got the experience of that too... It was enough to give them the skiing bug...they can start saving now!
The Alhambra the following day was simply stunning. Highly recommended and kids go free! Just one room of the intricately decorated plaster and stone stucco work would have blown us away but there are more than a dozen such rooms plus gorgeous tiles that I would happily cover our entire house in...inside and out! It was worth the 6am start and 1hr uphill walk to arrive in time for the 8.30am time slot. The very reasonably priced cafe con leche in the sunshine was almost equally exquisite afterwards! We wandered out through the gardens of the Generalife, the Summer Palace... Highly manicured with flowing water features. Water to the Moors, who hailed from hot, arid climes, was understandably the ultimate show of wealth. Beautiful too.
As a final Granada experience I really wanted us to go to a flamenco show in Sacramento, the traditional gypsy settlement of white houses that back into the hillside opposite the Alhambra, but they were too late and too far from the van. Old Town Granada is full of gorgeous narrow hilly streets but they're a no go for motorhomes...hey you have to leave a reason to return to special places... We will find flamenco elsewhere...
We also needed to warm up...it dropped to - 4 in the night! Time to head south. We read that Almeria had the least rainfall of anywhere in Europe and was one of the warmest places around... It also had a large free parking area sandwiched between a cool playpark and some basketball courts and was 5 min walk to the sea... Sold!
We had a few days in Almeria, the hottest of which we drove to the Tabernas desert nearby to really warm up. The desert is home to Mini Hollywood where many a 'spaghetti Western' has been filmed plus one I remember from my youth... Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We watched the tank scene shot there and went out for a walk...bit of a change of scene from the snow a few days before. Geography in action... The area consists of sedimentary rocks deposited over millions of years as an inland salt water lake after it was cut off from the sea by the upsurge of the Sierra Alhamilla. In some areas salt formations can be seen and cutting through it all are dry river beds (Ramblas) that you can walk along (or drive a tank along) and ravines. Not rated as fun as snow but good to see.
Beyond Almeria we fancied staying south but having a change of scene...Buzz had seen a post from an old Loughborough mate (who he last saw 35 years ago!) saying that he lived nearby... He made contact and a day later we were being warmly welcomed into the beautiful home of Chris & Claire in the tiny hamlet of Sopalmo near Mojacar. It would have been rude to arrive empty handed so we took them a nice bottle of wine... And covid!! Eek! And the next week is history...
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