Gaylyn and me both returned from our visit to Germany with a nasty cold. Some peace and quiet and a place to chill out away from the Christmas crowds was on order. I looked for parking east of Malaga, preferably pretty with some hikes or bike rides nearby and as much luxury as possible, so water, power, hot showers.
Canillas de Albaida is only 15 km up the road from the coast but google maps estimates 30 min for that by car. 30 km/h estimated average speed usually tells you something about the road. In this case steep, very curvy and narrow in places. In a campervan you don’t want to do it more often than necessary.
Canillas is a sweet little village on the slopes of the Parque Natural de las Sierras de Tejeda. The Area de Autocaravanas sits above the village and has very pretty views of the village and the mountains and when you step out you can see the Med in the distance.
We only went to town a few times because other than a few restaurants there is not so much on offer and by the time your in Canillas you have already lost about 100 m in altitude.
For shopping , a snack or a drink you are better off taking the walking track to Cómpeta. It doesn’t involve major changes in heart rate and Cómpeta has some half descent supermarkets and a little plaza with bars and restaurants and some actual people populating it. Thanks to our lovely German neighbours in the parking who volunteered all this information on day one.
Apparently the area is quite popular with Dutch and British people who own holiday homes and come here to escape the miserable weather in northern Europe.
I went to ride my bike but quickly decided that we were not in bike riding territory as I was confronted with ridiculous steepness. Actually the place is part of the “Gran Senda de Malaga Ciclable”. If you study the sign closely you find out that the difficulty for non electric mountain bike is 7 or “Muy dificl” – very difficult. Where I come from in Germany’s north anything over 40 m is a mountain..
We concentrated on hiking after that. There are some nice hikes to do in the area but as always it is not easy to get the right information. My default strategy of taking my mobile hiking map and puzzling something together does not work very well in Spain. Too many pathways end up blocked or just not existing. Even stealing tracks from Komoot has produced some nasty surprises.
Some really nice hikes start at the Fabrica de la Luz (the old hydro power plant) not far from Canillas. We rode there by bike and then continued on foot but you can get there by car too. The hike pictured below hasn’t been done by us completely because we were anxious we might get stuck in some dead end up there. We only did the northern part up to Puerto Blanquillo and then returned. Back at the end we met people who returned via Cerro Verde so you can safely assume it exists.
You can find the track here.
Otherwise Canillas turned out to be an excellent hangout. We stayed over christmas and for over a week altogether – that is an absolute record for us we usually move on a lot earlier.