We have wound up at Camping Las Lomas about 8kms east of Granada and 360m higher than Granada.The approach was a twisting mountain road which, on Sunday, was littered with cyclists, maniacs that they are, crawling up the 360m round an almost constant series of hairpin bends that afford no overtaking opportunities. Nonetheless, we finally made it without killing any.
We booked a “Sierra Nevada” pitch which, by Spanish standards, is supposedly more spacious at about 90m2. These are in the highest area of the campsite and in theory give a view of the surrounding mountains, if you look beyond the units parked in front of you. Still, it’s relatively pleasant.
I suspect that one of the normal reasons for staying here would be to visit the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Nein danke! There is a bus that goes up and down the cyclist-strewn mountain road, mostly also without killing any. However, we’ve done the Alhambra before and, frankly, whilst I know Francine enjoyed it I was left a little underwhelmed, but then I am a Philistine. Even though it’s religious, I was much more impressed by the Mezquita in Córdoba. If Granada isn’t your thing then I’m sure there are good walks in the mountains here.
About 2kms further up the winding mountain road lies the village of Güéjar Sierra. [Wrap your tongue around that if you can.] We decided we’d walk in and have a look. Going along the main road seemed a bad idea, trudging pedestrians getting squished along with the crawling cyclists. However, there was an alternative country road route, which we took.
The country road route went up a mountain beside the village, and I do mean up, before plunging back down into the village itself. At the summit of our climb, we’d gained 60m. One of my dislikes is slogging my way uphill, only to lose my height advantage by going back down again. What goes up must come down. You just know you’re going to have to reverse the process on the return.
Once we had descended back to the level of our campsite, it was 11:30. We found the main square with a shady café and sat down to enjoy a cortado. When 12:00 spun around, we enjoyed a beer as well. As we sat there watching traffic in unbelievably narrow, steep streets, one of the buses arrived and proceeded to turn around in said unbelievably narrow streets. Most entertaining, and impressive. Once it had completed its 3-point turn using a side street and began to leave, it met traffic coming into the village and had to reverse back uphill to let a car and motorcycle in before it could again try to depart.
We went in search of lunch but, being a Monday when many establishments are closed, there was a serious lack of open eateries.
We began the slog back uphill out of the village before descending once again to our campsite altitude of 1100m.
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