The Albatross
Monday 12 May 2014
Today we got out of Granada and we were both looking forward to a non-tourist swamped city. Barcelona and Granada are both a bit insane, and way overly touristy. The first goal was a simple walk in the Sierra Nevadas. We did an easy 8km one as I didn’t know how I’d go as I’m still not fully recovered from a hideous month long cold, so didn’t want to push it too hard. I’m not sure I agree with the easy rating, the path was generally well formed, but there were some decent hills, and a walk along a gorge that constantly had you hanging over the river on handles, or crawling under bulging rock faces. At one point I was on my belly pushing my backpack in front of me, not dangerous, but hardly easy. It was however very pretty, starting along the gorge, before looping back over a large hill with views back over Granada. There were lots of wildflowers out, but the sun was getting a bit brutal by midday when we finished, so were quite happy to hop in the car and head off.
Our destination today was Ronda, an old Islamic town dominated by a deep gorge, which we’ll go see in a minute. We’ve booked an apartment for a few days, which is right in the heart of town. It’s nice to have some space and we’re quite excited to be able to cook a meal with vegetables in it. They also sell really cheap rabbit in the supermarket, so that’ll be tomorrow’s dinner. Off for a pre-dinner look at the gorge.
The gorge is good, deep and spanned by a fantastic bridge, with blistering views over the surrounding countryside, we shall look at it better tomorrow.
We also found a shop that sells nothing but preserved pig,
cheese and local wine. We’ll explore that some more tomorrow too, although the
wine needs investigating now.
