Alfarnate

The thermometer on the pharmacy wall reads 7°C at nine on an April morning, and the men on the bar terrace are still in quilted anoraks. Only the cherry trees refuse to believe the altitude: they have burst into white blossom as if the Costa del Sol’s spring had been freight-lifted to 925m. This is Alfarnate, 50 minutes’ drive north-east of Málaga, and the first surprise is the air – thin, sharp, smelling of wet thyme instead of sunscreen.

A village that forgot the coast exists

The road up from the A-7 twists through limestone folds until the valley opens like a Castilian plateau dropped into southern Spain. Olives stop at 800m; almonds and cherries take over. Stone terraces, still hand-stacked, climb the slopes like contour lines. Nobody here talks about the beach: the pride is in winter frosts hard enough to kill the mosquito, and in summer afternoons that stop at 28°C when the coast is gasping at 38°C.

The houses are low, white, roofed with Arab tile. Geraniums trail from wrought-iron grills that were blacksmith-made in the 1950s, not ordered online. The streets keep the Moorish kink: narrow, steep, designed for mules and shadow. A donkey still works one of the smallholdings outside the village; you will hear its hoof-clop at dawn if the bedroom window is open.

What passes for landmarks

Santa Ana church squats at the top of the slope, its 16th-century tower patched with brick after an 1884 earthquake. Inside, the baroque retablo glitters with tobacco-coloured varnish and real gold leaf paid for by olive money in better centuries. Lighting is fifty cents in the box: coins clank like a pinball machine and the nave flares into life for three minutes, enough to spot the cherub whose left foot has worn away from centuries of kisses.

Below the church the Ermita del Santo Cristo del Perdón guards a plaster Christ whose glass eyes were imported from Valencia in 1802. The building is barely wider than a double garage, but every September half the province crams inside for the romería, then follows the statue downhill to a picnic site where whole pigs turn on homemade spits. Visitors are handed slices on crusty bread whether they look church-going or not.

The third “sight” is the public laundry, a stone trough fed by a natural spring. Until the 1970s women still queued here on Monday mornings; today it is the spot where hikers refill bottles and check phone signal (two bars, Vodafone only).

Eating: calories justified by altitude

Venta de Alfarnate, signed 2km short of the village, is part restaurant, part bandit museum. The building claims 13th-century origins; bullet holes in the door are blamed on 19th-century highwayman “El Tempranillo”, a useful tourist exaggeration. Inside, ceilings are four metres high, smoke-blackened, hung with hams and obsolete rifles. British visitors usually order the roast lamb – mountain-reared, pink, served with potatoes sliced so thin they shatter. A half portion feeds two; a full portion has been known to defeat a rugby front row. Expect €18–22 for a main, house wine at €2.50 a glass, and staff who will produce an English menu if asked politely but will not speak English back. Cash only: the card machine “gets cold and refuses to work”.

In the village itself, Bar Alhama opens at 07:00 for farmers. Huevos a lo bestia arrives as two fried eggs drowning in chorizo and pepper stew; locals mop the plate with bread and leave the spoon upright as a sign of satisfaction. Coffee is €1.20, served in glass tumblers. Cherry season (June) brings tarta de cerezas, a shallow tart with shortcrust and fruit that tastes like concentrated summer. The recipe is guarded by the baker’s daughter, who sells eight a day from a counter no bigger than a double wardrobe.

Tracks for boots and bikes

Three waymarked walks leave from the plaza. The easiest, 5km, climbs to the Llanos de Alfarnate, a cereal plateau ringed by 1,500m peaks. In May the wheat is knee-high and wild irises spot the field edges; by July the crop is stubble and eagles use the thermals overhead. The path is a farm track; boots are sensible, poles overkill.

A 12km loop drops into the Boquete de Zafarraya, a limestone gorge once used by smugglers running tobacco from Granada province. Signposts are white paint on stone every 500m – easy to miss in fog, which rolls in without warning above 1,000m. Carry a downloaded map; Google Maps shows the track as a dotted line then gives up.

Mountain-bikers head for the forest road to Villanueva de Trabuco: 22km of gravel with 600m ascent, no gates, water at kilometre 8 from a spring marked “no potable” – locals drink it, Brits filter it. Summer riders start at 06:00 to be back before the sun clears the ridge; even at 25°C the climb is dehydrating.

When to come, what to fear

Late March to early May is the sweet spot: blossom, green wheat, daytime 18–22°C, nights 8°C. Accommodation is scarce: the village has one three-room guesthouse, two rural cottages. Book early for cherry festival weekend (third Saturday June) and Moros y Cristianos (7–12 September), when the population triples and the bakery runs out of bread by 09:30.

Winter is bright but serious: snow lies two or three times a season and the road from Colmenar is chained at dawn. Summer is cooler than the coast yet still hot for walking; start before 08:00 or risk heatstroke – the only pharmacy stocks neither rehydration salts nor English.

Sunday lunchtime everything shuts except Venta de Alfarnate and Bar Alhama. Fill the hire-car tank in Colmenar; the village pump opens “when the owner’s dog wakes up”, according to the mayor.

The bill and the downside

A weekend for two, B&B: €70 room, €60 food, €30 petrol from Málaga airport. Total honesty: Alfarnate offers no flamenco tablaos, no infinity pools, no craft-beer tapas. English is rarely spoken, Wi-Fi crawls, and the nearest cash machine is 18km away. Come for silence, cherry scent, and tracks where the only other footprints were made by a man gathering wild asparagus at dawn. If that sounds like hardship, stay on the coast. If it sounds like relief, bring a fleece and arrive before the blossom falls.