3rd Apr TORRE DEL MAR - VENTA DEL PAREL

I breakfasted on Lidl’s Greek style yoghurt (comfort food, as I often have it for breakfast at home), fresh strawberries and Dorothy’s Lemon Curd (which I am addicted too – sorry Tamsin you have a rival!) – delicious. Oh yes, and all this was whilst overlooking the sea, even though it is a little bit bleak this morning.

We had a day of travelling today to an aire about fifty miles beyond Granada. We had wanted to visit Alhambra Palace (Moorish), but tickets have to be bought in advance and when Claire looked online they were sold out until well past Easter except for a couple of days with an 8.00 a.m. entry – so all we could do was look at it from the outside; one day we’ll be more organised and go back as it looks well worth a better visit.

Sat Nav was quiet today, we couldn’t make her talk (she wasn’t on mute, I checked and the volume was turned up to 90%); I turned her on and off, I muted and unmuted her, I turned the volume down and up; and still she wouldn’t utter a word. In the end I found a setting that was blank and when I selected ‘British English’ she suddenly came to life – don’t know what that was all about.

As we were driving along the motorway above the Sierra Nevada Mountains we saw these very interesting houses; they were underground cave houses, all you could see was a door built into the rock  and a chimney coming up through the soil – it was impossible to take a photo, as we were on a motorway.

Anyway once we had camped up for the night we went for a walk and found a few of these houses closer to the road; again the photos don’t do justice to these fabulous dwelling, but then we came upon this ........................

I'm standing on the roof, which is at road level

The walls had to be about four foot thick; Brett so wanted to go in, but the door was locked. It was no longer lived in (as part of the roof had fallen in), but furniture was still inside and we could still smell the smoke when we looked down the chimney.

Further along the road was a modern version of the cave house; it’s quite hard to visualise but you can see the chimney coming up through the vineyard and to the left is a roof-light/skylight (standing about 3 foot proud of the soil).

We ‘googled’ Andalucian cave houses; about 10,000 people still live in them today and their ages vary from Moorish to modern day. We found a village close by which we plan to visit tomorrow.