Purullena

The morning coach from Granada pulls in at 10:37, lets thirty passengers loose on the pottery stalls that line the A-92, and is gone by 11:15. In that brief window Purullena earns its living: cardboard boxes of terracotta casseroles, chimney pots painted with cobalt swallows, and garden pixies that will crack in the first British frost. When the coach leaves, the village reverts to the quiet business of actually making the stuff. Clay dust hangs in the air, the kiln chimneys breathe, and the only visitors left are the ones who turned off the motorway on purpose.

At 908 m the altitude is just high enough to shave three degrees off Granada’s summer heat and add them back in December. The difference matters: peaches grown in the vega below arrive two weeks later than the coast, but the flavour is concentrated, almost jammy. Walk the badlands at midday in August and you will understand why the potters fire at night; the sun has already done half the work. Come January, the same trails are sheeted with limestone-white frost and the cave houses exhale wood smoke that smells of almond prunings.

The Pottery Quarter

The workshops are not attractions, they are small factories. Start at Cerámica Artesanal Torres, where the grandfather still throws the giant ollas that hold twenty litres of olive brine, while his granddaughter airbrushes a Halloween pumpkin for the Saturday market. They will show you the kick wheel if you ask, but there is no gift shop, only a brown paper wrap and a felt-tip price on the base. Expect to pay €18 for a bean pot that would retail for £45 in Covent Garden; shipping to the UK is €25 and takes ten days. If the door is shut, knock—lunch breaks run till four.

Three doors along, Taller de José María Fuentes keeps the wood-fired Moorish kiln that has been alight, on and off, since 1847. The temperature gauge is still a melted bottle placed at the rear; when the neck droops, the firing is done. Inside, the air is thick with beeswax polish and the floor crunches with sherds that will be ground back into grog for tomorrow’s clay. No postcards, no soundtrack, just the low hum of an 800-year-old technology that refuses to become heritage.

Living Underground

Above the pottery strip the hill is riddled with caves—roughly 1,200 of them. Some are weekend boltholes for Granadinos escaping the city’s July bills; others are year-round homes whose electricity meter is the only clue you are not standing in an ordinary semi. The Cueva-Museo La Alcazaba occupies six chambers carved in the 15th century as a granary. Walls are two metres thick, summer temperature a constant 19 °C. Admission is €3, children free, and the guide (Lola, speaks rapid but clear English) demonstrates how the Muslim occupants channelled rainwater through camel-bone pipes. Allow forty minutes, longer if you suffer claustrophobia—the ceiling drops to 1.8 m in the bedroom.

Drive another three kilometres east to the Habitat Troglodita Almagruz, a string of tourist caves that face the Marchal badlands. Here the rooms are whitewashed, Wi-Fi reliable, and breakfast includes local honey. A night costs €70, half what you would pay in Granada’s Albaicín, and the star show is included: at 22:00 the lights of the village die, the Sierra Nevada sharpens into black paper cut-outs, and the Milky Way feels close enough to snag on the aerial. Book ahead—there are only nine suites and British astronomy clubs reserve six months out.

Clay, Canyons and Calories

The GR-740 long-distance path skirts the village, but the short loop signed “Barranco de Purullena” is enough for most. The trailhead begins beside the cemetery; give the guard dog at the last house a wide berth and within ten minutes you are walking a knife-edge ridge of red marl. Below, the rambla twists like a dried orange peel; above, bee-eaters dive off the thermals. The whole circuit is 4.3 km, negligible gradient, but carry water—there is no shade and the clay reflects heat like a toaster. Trainers suffice; sandals will fill with grit and the colour never washes out.

Back in the village, lunch options are limited but honest. Bar La Estación, opposite the defunct railway, serves remojón—salt-cod and orange salad that tastes like a Mediterranean version of kedgeree. Pair it with a caña of Alhambra and you are still under €8. Mesón El Troglodita does the rabbit-and-garlic stew; the meat is mild, closer to chicken thighs, and the portion defeats most appetites. They open only weekends in winter—call 958 75 20 46 to check, otherwise continue to Guadix where the plaza bars have heating.

When the Kilns Go Cold

Sunday lunchtime is a ghost shift. Pottery stalls pull down corrugated shutters, the bakery sells its last mollete at 11:00, and even the dogs retreat into cave doorways. Plan accordingly: fill the petrol tank in Guadix the night before, withdraw cash (the nearest ATM is six kilometres away on the service road), and buy peaches from the roadside girl who sets up in July—her prices are scrawled on a paper plate and she weighs the fruit on a bathroom scale that has never been level.

Winter brings the opposite problem. Frost at dawn can glaze the motorway flyover; if the Sierra Nevada is white, think twice about the minor road to the cave museum. Chains are rarely needed, but Spaniards drive as though they are. January fiestas for San Antón are authentic—bonfires of grapevine trunks, free plates of migas for whoever brings a log—but accommodation shuts; the Habitat caves are the only beds open and they book to German photographers who come for the silhouettes.

Worth the Detour?

Purullena will never compete with the Alhambra for spectacle. What it offers is process: clay being kneaded, kilns being stoked, rabbit being stirred with a wooden spoon whose handle is black from thirty years of sofrito. Stay longer than the souvenir stop and you notice details—the way potters stamp the base with their initials before the clay is leather-hard, how the church bell rings seven minutes late because the sacristan’s watch stopped in 1993, why the badlands glow violet just before the sun drops behind the sierra. These are not picture-postcard moments; they are simply the village continuing, indifferent to whether the coach comes back tomorrow.