Cool Air and Bright Light, Hoya de la Mora, Sierra Nevada

Zagan the motorhome’s just got his breath back, has had a good stretch and a peer out over half of Spain, and has settled down for a snooze for a couple of days. He’s done us proud, hauling us all 2550m up from sea level (1.6 vertical miles) this morning to the Hoya de la Mora ski station in the Sierra Nevada mountain range south-east of Granada (N37.09363, W3.38664).

There are several car parks up here, all free to stay in, and we picked one of the higher ones from the thumbs-up reviews on the park4night app. A few of the mountain snack-shacks are open alongside us, so we nipped into one and for less than the price of a campsite have eaten our fill. Simple grub, but the smiling multi-lingual Ducati-riding owner’s as happy as we are, and has confirmed we can kip here overnight. The view from the windscreen behind me is stupendous. A steady stream of tourists are arriving to peer out, walk the spider’s web of paths, celebrate cycling up here or simply sitting and letting the cool air wash over them.

Looking north to Granada

Hoya de la Mora Ski Station, Sierra Nevada, Spain

Planning in Team Zagan is always a bit of a dart-throwing exercise, but recently we’ve been throwing the arrows over our shoulders. Looking at our route these past couple of weeks, we’ve been all over the shop, finding ourselves driving about in wide Andalucian circles. When Ju finished the previous post, we went to bed with a plan to head to Tarifa, via Algeciras to buy new gear from Decathlon as some of ours is wearing through. From there we’d have taken a coastal route to Cadiz, then across to Cordoba to see the Mesquita, then north via Toledo and the Valley of the Fallen. The stifling weather forecast promise of 100ºF in Cordoba put paid to that idea. Our six week house sit has, **red faced**, accidentally pushed us 6 weeks closer to full-on summer, and Spain’s gone smoking oil hot. Charlie was suffering more than us, so we made a last minute decision to head east, along the coast to Valencia, where we can use the free motorway to head quickly for relief in the Basque region.

On the A7 (AGAIN!!!) along the Costa Del Sol. The road’s free and fast, but needs a bit of face slapping to get me in the mood for the traffic and suicidal slip roads

Hard to believe this was once all olive groves. It’s not my cup of tea, but Spain’s economy must love this coastline

Once past the main resorts the motorway went quiet, smooth and quick. Free too. Outside of the tourist areas Spain’s fast roads seem to be generally non-toll

After a pit stop in a packed-out, tight, oven of a car park to stock up at Lidl and buy me some new shorts at Decathlon, we narrowly avoided heat-induced divorce with a well-timed press of the air con button in Zagan’s cab. Temperate lowered, we rolled off to a campsite near Nerja, which we decided looked too grim to even enter, so ate lunch on a scrappy patch of land outside, and headed to another site on the coast near Motril (Camping Playa de Poniente, €17 with ACSI, N36.71803, W3.54764). Being blunt, the site was OK, but the ‘resort’ was (switches to Lonely Planet speak) uninspiring. Neither of us saw Motril itself, as the campsite was miles away, although Ju ran the coast so got a good look at its semi-industrial port, with Moroccan cars waiting for the ferry to Tanger Med. The campsite was a good spot – nice pool, spotless amenities, good service point, nice bloke on reception – but no tears flowed as we wheel spun out the gate this morning having decided to ‘grab some altitude’, as suggested by a blog reader on twitter.

The beach at Motril. The place will probably feel much better when it’s got a load of punters on the beach in July and August.

Playa de Poniente, A few km from Motril, Spain

The awesome kid’s bathroom at Camping Playa de Poniente, Motril, Spain

As we’ve already walked the wonders of Granada’s Alhambra, and we’ve also driven and walked in the Alpajurras, so beautifully described in Chris Stewart’s books, the obvious choice was to pile up here. The trip was a tale of two halves – first half fast, free, smooth motorway, cutting across and through the hills with music playing and air con blasting. The second half was a 20 mile haul upwards, an eye only taken off the back-to-back switchbacks to check on the rising temperature gauge, or to steal a glimpse of Granada and the haze-defocussed countryside to the north.

Bridges upon bridges on the A44 to Granada

Magnificent views north from the A395 ascending into the Sierra Nevada

It took a good while to get up here, but it was worth every minute. Guns and Roses playing out from the adjacent cafe has given way to some soft jazz, perhaps explaining why it’s suddenly acquired some punters (I like Guns and Roses, but not sure I want to eat up here in paradise, with Paradise City blasting in my left ear drum). It’s a mere 20ºC, ten degrees or more cooler than Granada and almost 20 degrees cooler than Cordoba. We have beer in the fridge, or we will have as soon as I’ve finished writing this, and will probably stay up here a couple of days before dipping our toes back in the heat (hah, Paradise City’s just fired up again, as soon as he’s got ’em in the rocker-shack-owner’s kicked off his tunes again!).

View of the desolate Sierra Nevada from the hill alongside us

Cheers folks! Jay