Darro

The church bell strikes noon and the temperature drops three degrees in the shade. At 1,200 metres above sea level, Darro’s altitude is the first thing a body notices, even before the cobbles underfoot or the smell of woodsmoke drifting from somebody’s kitchen. One minute you’re on the A-92, Granada’s heat shimmering off the tarmac; the next you’re winding up a service road that feels like a back entrance to the mountains themselves.

Darro sits on the last ripple of settled land before the Sierra Nevada rears up. Behind the white houses, the slope climbs straight into thyme-scented scrub and, higher still, into proper snow country. In April you can breakfast outside in shirt sleeves and watch fresh powder glint on the ridge above. By dusk you’ll be reaching for a fleece, whatever the month.

A Village that Fits in One Breath

There is no grand plaza, no promenade, no souvenir shop. The centre is a single Calle Real wide enough for one cautious car and a dog asleep across the doorway of the olive-oil cooperative. Park at the top by the stone cross, where the road flattens out, and walk. The only wrong turn is the one that takes you back to the car too soon.

The Iglesia de la Anunciación keeps watch from its own small knoll. Mudéjar brickwork shows through later plaster like ribs on a well-loved horse. Push the heavy door at about eleven and you’ll find the nave empty except for an elderly woman rearranging plastic flowers. She’ll nod, go on counting candles. The tower is the village compass: lose sight of it for five minutes and you realise how quickly lanes fold into each other, depositing you at the edge of town with barley fields crackling in the breeze.

Halfway down Calle Real, a metal shutter painted peppermint green marks the longaniza workshop. They smoke the sausages over holm-oak for three days; the aroma drifts into the street at dawn and again at tea-time. Buy a loop for €4 and it will keep till Barcelona, never mind the Costa del Sol. The cooperative next door sells oil in unlabelled half-litres: Montes de Granada D.O., mild enough to tip straight onto bread without wincing.

How to Walk without Getting Lost (and When to Turn Round)

Behind the last row of houses, a stony track sign-posted “Fuente de la Virgen” climbs gently between almond terraces. Twenty minutes brings you to a stone trough where water trickles year-round; locals fill plastic flagons and lug them home for drinking. Continue another forty minutes and the path forks: left towards the ruins of an Iberian settlement, right onto a forestry road that eventually joins the GR-7 long-distance trail. Neither route is way-marked to British standards—paint flashes fade, cairns fall over—so screenshot the satellite view before you set off and carry water even for a “short” stroll.

In summer, start early. By 10 a.m. the sun has weight; add another 200 m of ascent and the temperature feels Mediterranean again. Winter is the opposite: bright, sharp days when the mountains look close enough to touch, but a northerly wind can knife through denim in minutes. Snow is rare in the streets, yet the pass above the village closes at the first flurry—check the DGT traffic app before you drive up for the weekend.

Lunch, If You Time It Right

There is no menu-del-día circuit here. One bar opens for coffee at seven, closes at three, reopens if the owner feels like it. Mid-week in February you may find the door locked and the lights off; shrug and walk on. When it is open, order a bocadillo de choto—kid goat stewed with garlic and bay—served in a roll that disintegrates happily under the weight of gravy. A glass of house red is €1.50 and tastes as if someone has just emptied the fermenting vat into the bottle. Locals eat at two sharp; arrive at three-thirty and you’ll be offered whatever is left, which is usually still good.

Sunday lunchtime is different: extended families occupy every chair, children tear up and down the aisle, television blares a football match nobody watches. If you have not bagged a table by 1 p.m., bring crisps and sit on the church steps. The village shop—really the front room of a house—sells tinned tuna, UHT milk and those wine doughnuts that children like because they are essentially iced buns in a circle.

What You Won’t Find on TripAdvisor

The prehistoric cave paintings lie two kilometres out on a private finca. There is no ticket office, no audio guide, not even a sign. Instead, ask inside the ayuntamiento on Plaza de la Constitución for the key. The clerk will shrug, find a massive old iron thing and write your name in a ledger that dates back to 1987. You then drive yourself to a padlocked gate, let yourself in, and hope you have brought a torch. The paintings—red deer and a stick-man with a spear—fit on a slab the size of a dinner table. They are not Altamira, but you will probably have them to yourself, which counts for something.

Cash is equally elusive. The solitary cashpoint inside the Caja Rural branch accepts some UK cards and rejects others for sport. It is empty by Friday night and stays that way till Tuesday. Fill your wallet in Granada or Guadix before you head up the hill.

Staying Over: One House, One View

There are no hotels. A single row of self-catering cottages—Casa de los Montes—sits above the almond terraces, booked through the provincial tourism board’s website. Each apartment has a terrace facing south-east, so the morning sun hits the table while you boil the kettle. Nights are silent enough to hear the almonds drop. Bring slippers: stone floors are cold even in May, and the owners ration heating pellets like gold dust.

Alternatively, base yourself in Guadix, fifteen minutes away by car, and visit Darro as a half-day breather. Guix has caves you can sleep in, plus a supermarket that stocks cheddar for homesick children. The road between the two towns crosses badlands so lunar that spaghetti westerns were shot here; pull off at the sign for “Cortijo del Rosal” and walk fifty metres for photographs that look like Utah on half the air fare.

The Honest Verdict

Darro is not a destination to tick off; it is a pause between bigger things. Come for the gradient of air, the way mountains feel when they start just behind somebody’s vegetable patch, and for the small revelation that Spain still contains places where no one speaks English and no one minds that you don’t speak Spanish—you will manage with gestures, smiles and the universal price of a beer.

Leave before you expect to. Two hours is enough to sniff the sausages, climb to the trough and drink a coffee while the church bell counts the time. Stay longer and you will notice the shuttered houses outnumber the lived-in ones, the young have migrated to Granada, and conversation at the bar circles back to who died last winter. That is the real altitude sickness: the slow awareness that villages like this endure by subtraction, not addition.

Drive back down the service road. In the rear-view mirror Darro shrinks to a white scar on the hillside, the Sierra Nevada rising behind like a promise that something colder, wilder and much harder to hold is waiting just up the slope.