Malaga to Almuñécar - 50 miles

Today I reach Almuñécar and the end of my journey.

All morning I was either on track or road sandwiched between the sea and the towns. The 'Mediterranean Road' links the towns along the coast although knowing where one town ends and another begins is anybody’s guess as for the most part the building seems to be continuous. And it may only be two lanes wide but it is busy with traffic. 

I passed the long and strung out town of Nerja (renamed Altofaro by Lee) and then climbed the road up to the car park for the Nerja caves, an extensive cave system and a site where prehistoric paintings have been found. Although you can go into the caves, the areas with the paintings can not be visited. I was only interested in those prehistoric paintings so it was a bit of a blow to find that the best information about them is to be found in the Nerja museum four miles behind me. Those four miles had been a climb and I was not planning to head back so I stopped in a restaurant on the access road to the cave site to eat and while I did so the heavens opened.

Malaga Shopping Street 

Coastal Route

Leaving Malaga 

Malaga from along coast

Coastal Route 

Coastal Route

The rain never fully stopped and there came a point that I had to continue but it seemed that I had traded wet weather for the benefits of a much quieter and more isolated road: I think most traffic had gone onto the nearby motorway that is accessible from Nerja. The coastline had become more rocky now and the road was now no longer on the shoreline but some way above it, climbing gently around headlands and passing along cliff tops. I have now been cycling for five weeks since leaving Vigo and had begun to enjoy flat rides along beaches but now things had changed for my last day. And with only three miles to go the route had one final big climb for me: to cross the headland separating me from Almuñécar. It was a steep, winding and sweaty push to the top but from there I looked down upon the coastline on which Almuñécar and its bay sat, and it was a much more developed coastline than I had expected.

The bay before Almuñécar 

Almuñécar 

In my mind's eye Almuñécar has been a small village perched by the sea. If that were so then it has mostly been swept away. There is a modern (and I thought gaudy) two tier promenade along the arcing bay of the seafront and behind that low rise buildings full of shops and services, restaurants and ice cream parlours. As I walked my bike to my accommodation past streets of low rise housing - clearly not that old - it was obvious that the town is sprawling and I began to think that maybe the past I had read of in Lee's book, and any impressions I had formed from it, should have been left to rest in peace. But there is history here amongst the modern: the outline remains of a Roman salting factory, an eleventh century castle sitting high above the town although obscured by more modern buildings, the remains of another Roman building which includes Phoenician elements and more outline Roman remains, this time a thermal Bath. It was as I was walking a map of these remains and in the area of the castle that I realised the surrounding narrow hilltop streets represented at least part of the older town. One thing that I had failed to note from Lee's book is just how steep those narrow old streets are. Many are stepped to help you navigate them: this is not a place for the car or the frail. 

Castle

Castle

Roman fish salting factory

Roman/Phoenician ruins

Roman Baths

Looking for a place to eat I found, lost among the modern, one or two old streets set back from the seafront with a church and a few bars and shops, everything tightly packed but a small oasis of the old trapped in by everything new. But even the small pockets of old Almuñécar here and around the castle do not begin to bring any balance of history to the town. They now seem an anachronism in a sprawl of mostly new rather than the remnants of an old village's soul which soften the character of the modern. Who would not want to swap living in a village where poverty and the hardship of life define its character for living in a town with modern conveniences, an abundance of shops and restaurants and a flood of foreigners feeding the economy? But that swap has created a very different place.

Around the Castle

Around the Castle

Old Town

In my original plan I had thought I might spend two days exploring Almuñécar and absorbing its atmosphere. I was not so naive to think that the effect of tourism had not spread this far along the coast but neither had I realised it would have such a tight grip here either. Despite my short time in the town I felt I had exhausted what Almuñécar had to offer me on this personal journey into someone else's past so I headed for dinner in a restaurant in that old part of town, a tiny frontage concealing a deep and dark interior. It was full of character but the Spanish/English/French menu reinforced Almuñécar's modern focus as did the German and French diners that drifted in while I ate. Tomorrow I head back to Malaga.