The principal purpose of this website - a sister website to our main www.Spainaway.com website - is to introduce the reader to the wide variety of walking holidays that we have designed in the area of Andalucia in general, and Nerja in particular, largely based around our own self-catering accommodation. These holidays are very much offered as a complete package, including car hire etc, and, in addition to some classic walking, are also intended to include all the other resort-based opportunities that exist in this area.
Essentially our walks are located in the region known as La Axarquia, which is the name given by the Moors to the swathe of land just back from the Mediterranean coast itself, and which stretches from Malaga east towards the Sierra Nevada (Axarquia literally means ‘land to the east’). Set within this area is the amazing Parque Natural, below, comprising the Sierra of Tejeda (plus those of Almijara and Alhama), and which was set up in 1999. A further area in which we offer walking is that of the Sierra Nevada, just south of Granada.
Andalucia is of course as noted for its holiday resorts as for its walking opportunities, but few can compete with Nerja itself. Totally unspoilt by tourism, Nerja remains a marvellously typical Spanish coastal town, while also being home to over 400 bars and restaurants, more than half a dozen award-winning beaches and a multitude of other activities. A few miles inland from Nerja itself lies the wonderful Andalucian countryside, containing gems such as the ‘pueblo blancos’ – or ‘white villages’ – of Frigiliana, Competa and so on.
In addition to Nerja’s public attractions, the range of accommodation available here is immense, from friendly hotels through to idyllic villas and apartments, many with private pools. Nerja is truly a great place for a holiday to suit all tastes.
In fact Nerja was recently voted the best seaside town in the whole of Spain - and by a large margin too!
A secondary purpose of the website is simply to offer information to everybody who might be interested in walking in this area, whether booking directly through us or not. To this end we include an exhaustive list of published sources of information and so on.
It is our experience, though, that most of the published routes that you may come across elsewhere, contain ambiguities that can lead to uncertainty as to which way to go (the area is full of old mule tracks and the like, and roads get up and down graded, as well as sometimes being blocked off). And going wrong in an area of this complexity can be a real downer!
We would like to emphasise, therefore, that all of the self-guided routes that we ourselves recommend have been exhaustively researched by us, and are continually checked out to see that the routes are still workable. Nerja itself is surrounded by extremely scenic hills and mountains, meaning that many of the routes described do require a significant level of fitness. However it might be worth pointing out that the writer has himself checked out every route shown. And if he can achieve these in his mid-seventies, with knees that are extremely dodgy, as a result of completing nearly 70 marathons and other ultra-distance races, when younger, then you should be able to do so too!
Full walking directions are given on the individual webpage that accompanies each walk. However, and as an additional service we offer to guests who book their accommodation through us, we have added a series of downloadable PDFs to accompany each walk that we describe, in which we have taken great care to ensure that all route descriptions are as full and accurate as possible, with GPS-generated maps, and photographs of ambiguous junctions etc. They also contain details of things to see along the way, historical notes and so on.
