Cádiar

At eight o’clock on a July evening the thermometer on the bakery wall in Cádiar still reads 31 °C, yet the old men on the plastic chairs wear woollen caps. The contradiction makes sense once you know the village sits at 919 m, high enough for the Atlantic breeze to slide over the Sierra Nevada and drop the temperature fifteen degrees the moment the sun disappears. British visitors expecting Andalucía to feel like the Costa del Sol learn to pack a fleece alongside the sun-cream.

Cádiar squats on a south-facing shelf above the Guadalfeo valley, its white cubes climbing the slope like badly stacked sugar lumps. From the upper streets you can, on the very clearest mornings, make out the hazy silhouette of Morocco. Most days you simply stare down a staircase of almond terraces to the blue stripe of the Mediterranean forty kilometres away – a view that costs nothing but the diesel to get here.

Roads that forget the twentieth century

The last hour of the journey is what filters the coach parties out. Leave the A-7 at Motril, follow the sign for Trevélez, and the tarmac narrows to a single lane clawed into the gorge wall. Coaches over ten metres are banned; sat-nav adds an extra forty minutes it can’t explain. What feels like an eternity of hairpins deposits you finally on the village’s small plateau, where the only traffic jam is two vans outside the Friday market: one selling loquats, the other cheap bras.

There is no railway, and the Alsa bus from Granada times its arrival to coincide with siesta, so hire cars dominate the dusty parking strip by the football pitch. If you arrive after dark – and in winter the sun drops before five – fill up in Órgiva beforehand; the village’s solitary Cajamar cash machine has a habit of swallowing cards on weekends.

A village that refuses to audition for postcards

Cádiar has never quite accepted that tourism is an industry. The town hall website still lists “agriculture” first; the Friday market occupies the same three streets it did in the 1970s; and the bakery will not open earlier just because you have an early flight. The result is a place where foreigners are noticed, stared at, then offered a chair. Order a coffee in Bar La Alpujarra and the owner will ask which farm you’re walking to, assuming you must be here for a reason.

Flat-roofed houses, inherited from the Moriscos, keep their original chimneys – miniature turrets that poke above the roofline like chess pieces. Passageways called tinaos tunnel between dwellings, handy when the rain arrives in April and turns the cobbles into a slide. The only obvious monument is the parish church, its squat tower a hybrid of Moorish brick and sixteenth-century stone. Inside, the air smells of candle wax and chestnut smoke drifting from nearby houses that still use open hearths.

Footpaths that start at the front door

You can leave the car keys in the apartment. Marked footpaths fan out from the last streetlamp, contouring along ancient irrigation channels. The Sendero de los Bancales, a two-hour loop, cuts across terraces held up by dry-stone walls no mortar has ever touched. In late March the almond blossom is long gone but the wild peonies are out, and the only sound is the click of shears as a farmer trims his vines. Add another hour by dropping into the Barranco de la Sangre, where oleanders grow head-high and vultures turn slow circles overhead.

Serious walkers use Cádiar as a staging post on the GR-7 long-distance trail; the stage east to Trevélez is 18 km with 900 m of ascent, tough enough to justify the plato alpujarreño waiting at the far end – a belt-busting fry-up of chorizo, black pudding, jamón and egg that no Spaniard would touch before midday.

Food built for altitude

Alpujarran cooking was designed by people who spent daylight hours on forty-degree slopes. Lunch is therefore substantial, cheap and arrives quickly. Bar El Rincón serves choto al ajillo – kid goat flash-fried with garlic – at €9 a plate, half what you would pay on the coast. The local hams cure higher up in Trevélez; the altitude and cold air give them a milder, less salty bite than the stuff exported to British supermarkets. Muscatel wine from the coastal vineyards is sold by the half-litre for €2.80 and tastes like alcoholic grape juice – dangerously drinkable.

Vegetarians survive on berenjenas con miel – aubergine chips drizzled with cane honey – and the occasional migas made with peppers instead of pork. If self-catering, hit the Friday market before ten: the grape seller from nearby Albondón brings varieties you never see in UK supermarkets, seeded, tiny and explosively sweet. Stock up on fresh goat cheese too; it sours within three days, which is why supermarket versions taste bland by comparison.

Seasons that flip within a day

April and October give you the widest margin. In spring the daytime temperature hovers around 22 °C, ideal for walking, but night can still dip to 6 °C – log-burner weather if your rental has one. Summer days regularly top 38 °C; the village empties by eleven and reappears at seven, copying the rhythm of harvest workers. Autumn brings clouds of dust as tractors haul chestnuts down to the cooperatives; the smell of roasting drifts through the streets and every bar suddenly offers castañas asadas at €2 a paper cone. Winter is crisp, often brilliant, but snow can block the upper pass to Trevélez without warning; carry chains November to March.

When nothing happens, watch

August fiestas honour the Virgin with brass bands that rehearse for three weeks beforehand, ensuring no one sleeps before two. Emigrants return from Barcelona and Basel, inflating the population to maybe 2,500; cousins compare lottery numbers over tinto de verano and teenage girls parade in dresses bought on credit. By the 16th the village shrinks again, the silence almost shocking.

Semana Santa is smaller, slower, more photogenic. On Good Friday the procession inches down Calle Real; bearers pause every twenty metres to negotiate the 18 % gradient, sweating under purple robes. Spectators stand so close they can smell the beeswax; there is no cordon, no ticket, no commentary in four languages.

Leaving without the souvenir cliché

Shops do not open on Sundays, or Monday mornings, or whenever the owner drives to Granada for hospital appointments. What you can buy is practical: hand-thrown clay cazuelas meant for the oven, not the mantelpiece; wicker baskets still used for hauling almonds; a half-kilo of jamón wrapped in waxed paper that customs may confiscate anyway. Better simply to memorise the smell of wild thyme on the terraces, the way the light turns the stone walls the colour of burnt cream, the sound of the village fountain that has run since the Moors channelled it.

Drive away at dawn and the road down to the coast feels shorter; gravity helps, and the sea appears suddenly, a flat metallic sheet under the morning haze. Behind you, Cádiar will have already resumed its weekday rhythm: bread van, almond pickers, the click of shears starting again. It will not miss you, and that, rather than any souvenir, is the surest sign you have been somewhere real.