A review of walking the Sierra de Grazalema

This was a review written for the Telegraph:

Sierra de Grazalema

HOLIDAY REPORT

Type:  Independent walking holiday arranged by company (Inntravel)

Cost:  (For two people) Inntravel £1,340; Own flights Bournemouth-Malaga (Thomson) £330; Car hire (Sixt) £196

Duration:  1 week

Participants:  Couple

Highlights:  Walking across carpets of wildflowers and thyme in the remote unspoilt mountains of the Sierra de Grazalema.  Plunging between moonscape rocks through thickets of multiflowered cistus.  Strolling beneath gnarled ancient cork oaks and olive trees.  Griffon vultures silently circling overhead.  Rare prehistoric pine trees with their remarkable pink fir cones clinging to the misty ridges.  The silence – apart from the occasional call of a goatherd or the snuffle of wild grazing pigs.  Simple Spanish food, especially the slow cooked pork, always served with the best olives, and high quality wine.  Meals finished off with a complimentary sip of herb liqueur.

Lowlights:  The hotel owned by an English couple who must have watched ‘A place in the sun’, and bought the place they had always dreamed of, only to find it ravaged by floods.  Avoiding their big slobbery dog (and his leavings) on the patio.  Finding that the hostess, whose cooking the notes said was ‘a revelation, with guests coming from far and wide’ had decided to go to a party: awaiting the meal to be cooked by Bill, her partner, whose opening gambit as we arrived at the table was ‘I’m slow’, and finding that he was a master of understatement.

Best Hotel: Molina de Santos, Benojoan.  I don’t need 100 words – small hotel, pretty gardens, excellent room, lovely food and wine, helpful staff (12 words).

Worst Hotel: Mentioned above – I don’t wish to give its name – maybe things have got better.

Tips and recommendations: Avoid booking the cheapest Internet car hire at Malaga airport.  You may queue for a couple of hours, compared with 10 minutes at some of the other companies (names available on request).  Take the less direct route up into the Serrania de Ronda by heading inland towards Campillos (A357).  Then you approach Ronda by a good road (A367) with gradual gradients and gentle corners.  The more obvious but less enjoyable strategy is to drive down the coast to Marbella on the A7 autoroute, and then turn inland on the A397.  But this is a road like an Alton Towers switchback.  We met families with children who had had to stop by the roadside for the children to be sick.  The Montejaque Circuit is an excellent long circular walk – up to 12 miles, and even if you aren’t on this holiday you can drive to Montejaque, park easily above the town by the ‘allotments’ and walk through mountains, badlands, upland plains, rolling farm land, and finally olive groves back to Montejaque.

What to avoid: in general, when in Spain, avoid the paella.  Paella, like bouillabaisse, is probably the most overrated (and often overpriced) dish in world cuisine.  You can make it much better, much quicker, and certainly much cheaper at home, providing that you can source some mussels and prawns: and even if you can’t you can invent your own ingredients.  On second thoughts just turn it into a risotto.  The problem is, for some people, Spain isn’t Spain without getting ripped off for a pan of paella!