Fondón

The stone church tower rises where a minaret once stood, its bells tolling across stone-and-slate roofs that look more Pyrenean than postcard Andalusian. At 846 metres above sea level, Fondón doesn’t do the white-washed village routine. Instead, it hunkers down into the Sierra de la Alpujarra, its houses the colour of the mountain itself, as if the settlement were trying to disappear rather than advertise itself.

This is the last place the Moriscos held out before the final expulsion in 1570, and the village still feels like somewhere people retreat to rather than parade through. The population hovers around 500 – not 5,000 as the regional census claims, locals will tell you, because most of those names belong to descendants who moved to Barcelona decades ago but keep their papers registered here for sentimental reasons. What remains is a working village where grandmothers sweep doorways at dawn and the evening traffic jam involves three dogs and a farmer on a quad bike.

The mountain that feeds the table

Terraces of almonds, olives and ancient vines stitch into the slopes beneath the village, following irrigation channels hacked out during the Moorish period. Water still runs on a strict rota: Tuesday might be Señora García’s turn for her lettuce plot, Wednesday belongs to the cooperative further down the gorge. Turn up in April or October and you’ll see the system in action – not a heritage demonstration, just Tuesday.

The same water ends up in bowls of migas at Bar La Alpujarra, where breadcrumbs are fried in olive oil until they resemble savoury granola, then scattered with grapes from the vineyard opposite. It’s comfort food for farmers who’ve been up since five, and it costs €6 including a glass of local muscat that tastes like sunshine bottled. The bar opens at seven in the morning for coffee and churros, shuts at three, then reopens at eight for beer and tapas. Try turning up outside those hours and the door will be locked, no matter how hungry you are.

Above the village, the Sendero de los Bancales picks its way along dry-stone walls built to create flat earth where none existed. The walk is only four kilometres but gains 250 metres of height, enough to make you grateful for the spring that bubbles out of the rock halfway round. From the top you can see the whole basin: the Andarax river a silver thread, the Sierra de Gádor razor-sharp against the sky, and on very clear days the Mediterranean winking 45 kilometres away. Don’t expect signage in English – the red-and-white dashes painted on stones are your only guide, and they assume you know how to read them.

What passes for excitement

Fondón’s fiestas are calibrated to village scale. The August feria fills the single square with a single caseta where the same three songs play until the generator runs out of diesel. In late November the honour of San Andrés involves a procession, a brass band that remembers the chords most of the time, and free stew for anyone who brings a bowl. The stew is olla alpujarreña, a chickpea-and-cabbage affair thickened with chorizo that has spent a year air-drying in someone’s attic. It’s served from a cauldron that looks big enough to bathe in, and tastes better than anything you’ll find on the coast.

If you arrive expecting craft stalls or flamenco shows, you’ll be disappointed. The entertainment is watching the village teenager charged with stirring the pot try to look nonchalant while everyone’s grandmother critiques his technique. Fireworks are restricted to two rockets at the start and one at the end; the budget this year went on extra chickpeas instead.

Getting there, staying there, leaving

Almería airport is 75 minutes away by hire car, the last 25 kilometres on the A-348 that wriggles through the gorge like a dropped ribbon. Fill up before you leave the motorway – the only petrol pump in the valley belongs to a farmer who opens it when he feels like it. Buses exist on paper: one school service at dawn, one return at dusk. Miss those and you’re walking.

Accommodation is limited to three options. Casa Rural La Solana has four rooms in a 200-year-old house where the Wi-Fi works if you stand by the front door and the heating is a wood burner you feed yourself. Hostal El Cerrillo offers eight pine-clad rooms above the bar; ask for the back ones unless you fancy the dawn chorus of delivery vans. Both charge around €60 a night including breakfast – coffee, toast and homemade jam that tastes of the oranges you saw growing outside. The third choice is to stay in Alboloduy ten minutes down the road, but then you’d miss the silence that drops over Fondón once the church clock strikes ten.

That silence is the point. Nights are star-stuffed and cool even in July; at 846 metres the village escapes the coastal oven. Bring a jumper for after dark and expect to pay cash everywhere. The ATM dispenses €50 notes no one wants to change, so break them at the bakery early doors when Señora Lola still has plenty of coins.

The honest verdict

Fondón won’t change your life. It has no souvenir shops, no Michelin mentions, no ancient castle worth the climb – just a few wall stubs and a view. What it does have is the sense that Spain continues past the point where guidebooks stop, a place where lunch is whatever the garden produced this morning and the barman remembers how you take your coffee from one visit to the next.

Come if you want to walk without meeting anyone, if you like your wine young and your mountains empty, if you’re happy to eat at the only place that’s open and find it better than the city options. Don’t come if you need entertainment provided, if one-church-one-bar villages make you twitchy, if the thought of a night sky unspoiled by streetlights feels like isolation rather than luxury.

Leave before noon on check-out day and you’ll still make the 15:30 easyJet from Almería to Gatwick, touching down in time for the evening news and a takeaway that will taste of nothing after a week of chickpeas and mountain air.