Benamaurel

The church bell strikes noon and the only reply is a swallow diving between terracotta roofs. At 723 metres above sea level, Benamaurel sits high enough for the air to feel thin, yet the village is still dwarfed by the sierras that roll away towards Granada. From the mirador above the cemetery you can watch wheat fields shimmer like a pale sea until they dissolve into blue distance. It is the sort of view that makes you count kilometres, not landmarks—because there simply aren’t any.

Cave Life, Real Life

Roughly half the population here sleep inside rock. The cave houses—some whitewashed, others left the colour of toasted bread—are scooped into the soft marl hillside that drops towards the narrow gorge of the Fardes river. A few are still working farms: straw bales stacked at the mouth, chickens scratching in the dust, the smell of grain and wood smoke drifting out. Others have been fitted with under-floor heating and Nespresso machines by escapees from Manchester or Rotterdam who appear on Channel 5 documentaries about “extreme Spanish living”. The contrast is blunt but somehow works; neighbours compare insulation values over morning coffee instead of complaining about the weather—because the weather, especially in July, is everyone’s business.

British couples who book Cuevas Helena for a fortnight tend to re-book before they leave. The appeal is simple: 21 °C indoors when it’s 38 °C outside, no traffic, and stars so bright you wake up thinking someone has left the patio light on. Wi-Fi is reliable enough for Teams calls, though you may need to stand by the almond tree for three bars. The owners leave a walking map and instructions for the pellet burner; nights in March can dip to 6 °C and cave walls take a day to warm up, so ask for the heating to be started before you arrive.

Cobbles, Calves and the Sunday Market

Benamaurel is built on three ridges separated by two barrancos. Walking from the top church to the bottom bakery involves calf muscles you last used in the Lake District. The lanes are so narrow that cars fold their mirrors in; better to leave the hire car on the upper square and continue on foot. Sunday morning the plaza fills with perhaps forty stalls—modest by Andalusian standards, yet big enough for a paper cone of roasted almonds, a block of local goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, and a plastic glass of beer that costs €1 if you stand at the bar counter someone has wheeled out from inside the cultural centre. British visitors usually head straight to the stall selling thick pink ham; the vendor will carve a tasting slice so translucent you can read the price board through it.

Afternoons shut down hard. By two o’clock the last metal shutter rattles down and even the dogs look for shade. Plan accordingly: buy bread, water and wine before the siesta starts, or you will be making a 40-minute round trip to the nearest supermarket in Baza.

A Landscape That Forgives No One

The Altiplano de Granada is high steppe country—olives, almonds, cereals—where the soil looks exhausted yet keeps producing. From February the fields turn emerald with young wheat; by June they are already gold and crackling. There is no soft English green to rest the eye, only olive grey and earth brown, so when the sun sinks the sudden butterscotch light feels almost aggressive. Photographers love it; fair-skinned hikers learn to love factor 50. The GR-610 long-distance path skirts the village, linking to a 14-kilometre loop that climbs Cerro Cepero, an Iberian settlement that predates the Romans. Information on site is limited to a single weather-worn panel, so download the town hall PDF beforehand or take the guesswork as part of the fun. The summit gives views across two provinces; on the clearest days you can pick out the white speck of the Sierra Nevada’s ski station 90 kilometres away.

Cyclists arrive too, though usually by accident—Benamaurel sits between two vicious climbs that feature in Spanish sportives. Rosa at Bar El Fuerte keeps a box of energy bars donated by grateful riders who rolled in dehydrated and left speaking of her like a benevolent aunt. She will fill bottles, point to the free tapas, and refuse a tip with a firmness that brooks no argument.

Fiestas, Fire and the Moors Who Never Left

Mid-January brings San Antón. At dusk the village builds a bonfire the size of a house in the lower gorge; by nine it is a roaring cube and the mayor is sprinkling holy water while locals edge forward with sausages on long forks. Pets are blessed the following morning—expect to see a bewildered whippet wearing a saint’s ribbon while a pony defecates outside the church. The bigger spectacle is the Moros y Cristianos fiesta in April. For three days the population doubles as neighbouring villages arrive to watch costumed troops recreate medieval skirmishes with musket fire and dubious acting. Saturday night ends in a foam party in the municipal pool car park; Sunday morning the priest complains about empty pews. Accommodation books up nine months ahead, so reserve early or stay 25 kilometres away and accept you’ll be driving home past 2 a.m. along a road that has no lighting.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

April and late-October give warm days, cool nights and fields either green or freshly ploughed. August is fierce—thermometers still read 30 °C at midnight—and the village pool becomes a social necessity rather than a luxury. Winter is quiet, occasionally bleak; snow isn’t unknown and the wind that channels up the gorge can rattle cave doors. The compensation is price: a three-bedroom cave drops to £70 a night, wood included. Whoever is in charge of the sky also turns the drama up to eleven: bruised clouds, shafts of yellow light, rain curtains that evaporate before they hit the ground.

Fly into Granada if you can; the drive east on the A-92 is 125 kilometres of olive monoculture and takes ninety minutes. Málaga works too, but add another hour and a half across sometimes tedious motorway. A car is non-negotiable—there are three buses a day from Baza, none after 18:00, and the last kilometre into the village is a 12 % gradient that feels steeper when you have luggage.

Last Orders

Benamaurel will not entertain you after ten o’clock. Bars close early, the only nightclub is a Bluetooth speaker someone brings to the square, and if you want theatre you’ll have to hope the mayor’s cousin is holding his fortieth birthday party in the open-air salon. What the village does offer is space—geological, temporal and human. A week here either stretches until you forget to check email, or feels so removed from ordinary life that by day three you are plotting a longer escape. Book the cave, pack walking boots and a sense of horizontal time. If the silence after the church bell makes you twitch, Granada’s tapas strip is only an hour away.