We waited and we waited for confirmation of our tickets to visit El Caminito del Rey on Tuesday. By end of the business day we still hadn’t heard so we opened a bottle of wine and held a planning meeting. Simon said he would pass on the walk as he doesn’t do heights and 300ft up a gorge classes as a height but he was more than happy to Daisy sit as some of the surfaces didn’t look good for paws. Rose thought that the forecast weather temps were too low to expose oneself on the side of a gorge halfway up a mountain and I concurred, so we’d already decided to nix the walk and head for Granada a day early when email confirmation of our reservation finally arrived at 8pm CET.

By the next morning we’d all had time to think about the even lower temperatures forecast for Granada and Cordoba over the next few days and had independently come to the same conclusion; come down from the mountains they may be beautiful but we’re too old (well Rose and I are, Simon isn’t even a pensioner yet) to endure the cold for long. Everywhere in the hinterland is forecast to remain cold for the next 3-4 weeks so Daisy and I, awakening to another freezing morning, had a brief pillow talk and, although the remainder of our trip had been finalised, I made the decision, and Daize didn’t veto it, to nix all points inland, turn towards the coast and make my way back up through Spain on a similar route to our trip down.

So both vans sped down the “autovia” past the snow covered Nevadas to Malaga, turned northward and are by the beach, somewhat warmer this evening than last – by several degrees. We have planned another planning meeting tomorrow morning, with coffee and pain-au-chocolat, to decide where our next stop will be – I’m game for anywhere the warm side of the mountains!

My itinerary for touring central Spain will be used at a later and warmer season …

🙂 🙂 🙂