Alhama de Almería

At 7.30 on a Friday morning the plaza smells of woodsmoke and oranges. A woman in a butcher’s coat hoses down the pavement outside the carnicería; two builders lean against a van drinking café con leche from glasses small enough to fit a child’s hand. Nothing is rushing, least of all the thermal spring that bubbles up beside the church at a steady 47 °C – the same temperature the Romans found when they first tiled the pools two millennia ago.

Alhama de Almería sits 520 m above the Mediterranean, where the Sierra Nevada begins to shrug off its snow and the citrus groves of the Andarax valley take over. The village is 50 km from the coast, 35 minutes beyond the airport, and a world away from the costas’ towel-wrestling beaches. Come for a night or two and you’ll hear more Arabic in the street names than English in the bars – which is exactly why people still come.

A village that keeps its own hours

The old centre is a five-minute walk from edge to edge, but the gradients demand respect. Streets twist up the hillside like dried-out watercourses; whitewashed walls reflect midday glare, while overhanging balconies throw pools of shade thick enough to cool your skin by several degrees. Park on Avenida de la Constitución – free, but fill the side streets by 11 a.m. on market day – and climb. The only traffic jam you’re likely to meet is a farmer easing a trailer of lemons down Calle Real.

The parish church of La Encarnación, built on the footprint of the mosque, doesn’t open until ten. When it does, the interior is refreshingly plain: brick pillars, a cedar-wood ceiling, faint traces of 16th-century paint around the altar. No audio guide, no gift shop, just a woman selling devotional candles for €1 and the smell of wax drifting through the nave.

Above the church, a gravel path leads to what’s left of the Moorish castle. The masonry is fragmentary – one horseshoe arch, a few courses of wall – but the view south across the valley repays the stiff two-minute climb. On clear winter mornings you can pick out the white cluster of Órgiva in the next valley; by late afternoon the same ridge glows the colour of burnt toffee.

Water, first and last

Al-hammah means “hot spring” in Arabic, and the village still revolves around its water. The modern Balneario de Alhama occupies the old Roman baths at the foot of the hill. Entry costs €12 for a two-hour session in the thermal pool, under a brick-vaulted ceiling that drips like a rainforest. Evening slots (17.00-21.00) are quieter, especially on Mondays and Tuesdays when coach parties are thin on the ground. Bring flip-flops and a €1 coin for the locker; towels can be hired for €2 but dry slowly in the mountain air.

If the spa is closed, follow the signed Ruta de los Manantiales, a 4 km loop that threads together three public fountains and a tiny waterfall shaded by Aleppo pines. The path is level, stroller-friendly, and takes ninety minutes if you stop to refill your bottle at each spring – the water is drinkable, cold, and tastes faintly of iron.

What lands on the plate

Lunch starts at two and finishes when the cook runs out. Bar la Reja beside the town hall does a decent menú del día for €12: garlic soup, chuletas de cordero, and a slab of flan that wobbles like an anxious jelly. Expect goat stew on Thursdays, migas (fried breadcrumbs laced with chorizo) on market Fridays. Vegetarians get berenjenas con miel – aubergine chips drizzled with cane honey – and a lecture from the owner about the superior quality of Alhama flour. Wine arrives in a glass bottle sealed with foil, costs €1.80, and is best described as “honest”.

For self-caterers, the Friday market occupies Calle Nueva until two. Stallholders sell imperfect oranges by the kilo, bunches of coriander still dusty with soil, and churros that snap like dry twigs. Bring cash – most vendors weigh produce on analogue scales and can’t process cards.

Walking without working too hard

The valley is criss-crossed by irrigation lanes originally built by the Moors; converted into footpaths, they deliver flat walking in a region famous for knee-crunching ascents. A thirty-minute stroll west along the Acequia de la Sierra brings you to an aqueduct built in 1570, still carrying water to the vegetable plots. Continue another hour and you reach the hamlet of Fuente del Negro, where a bar the size of a living room serves beer so cold it hurts your teeth.

If you want proper altitude, drive 20 minutes up the A-348 to the trailhead at Calar Alto. From there a 6 km out-and-back climbs to 2,100 m along an old mule track, giving views east to the Tabernas badlands and, on very clear days, the mirage-like shimmer of the Mediterranean 60 km away. Summer hikers should start by eight; the same path is popular with snow-shoers in February when the access road is gritted but still requires chains.

When to turn up – and when to leave

March to May is the sweet spot: almond blossom first, then poppies smearing the fields red. Daytime temperatures sit in the low 20s, cool enough for walking, warm enough to sit outside at nine. October repeats the trick, with the added bonus of grape harvests and less pollen for hay-fever sufferers.

July and August are furnace-hot; thermometers touch 38 °C by eleven, and the village retreats indoors until six. If you must come, book the spa’s evening session, plan walks for dawn, and accept that lunch will last three hours – the waiter won’t bring the bill until the thermometer drops.

Winter days are sharp and bright – 15 °C in sunlight, 5 °C the moment it slips behind the castle. Hotels switch on heating after dark; electricity is expensive, so rooms can feel tepid rather than toasty. Pack a fleece and expect starlight so clear you’ll see the Pleiades without trying.

A word on language and pace

English is thin on the ground. A phrasebook (or a data-enabled phone) is as useful as sun-cream. The tourist office on Calle Cristóbal Rodríguez keeps erratic hours – officially 10-14.00, but don’t bet on it. Download the 1:25,000 walking map before you leave the UK; the paper version sells out by Easter.

Alhama is not a place for checklist tourism. You could “do” the church, castle and spa before lunch and still be 40 minutes from the airport by mid-afternoon – but you would have missed the point. The village works because it refuses to hurry. Stay a night, sit in the plaza once the day-trippers have gone, and you’ll hear the metallic clack of dominoes drifting out of the social club until well past midnight. That’s the sound of a place that has never needed to advertise itself.