Spain – Tabernas Desert

Hairpin bends through the barren hills behind Canjáyar, with the white houses of the former Moorish mountain village at your back. Roads that run like winding alleys through a landscape where direct routes are as rare as shadows. In the interior of Andalusia, the route circles the Tabernas Desert along the hill ranges that separate it from the Mediterranean Sea. Only thirty miles away from the coast: Europe's only desert, in an isolated world of its own. Driving north, the rocky hills repeatedly allow a glimpse of the barren land of the Tabernas Desert. A short glance to the right at the passenger, a living snapshot against the blurred panorama in shimmering heat. The roads do not allow much more distraction than this until the route encounters a much too short section of motorway near Abla. Two lanes, seven gears and with the feeling that your foot is on the brake again almost immediately. The foehn winds propel the few clouds towards you, and before you know it you have already reached the point at which the route turns off again: heading sharply towards the north and up into the Sierra de los Filabres. It is as if the road takes a run-up from Bacares before it really turns its attention to the desert. The twisting roads seem to have been built for a single purpose, namely to make travellers lose all sense of orientation, as if they were blindfolded and turned round and round in a circle. Only that this downhill stretch meets its purpose while demanding concentration and a corresponding overview from the driver. At the end of the washed-out valley floors you arrive in a different world – and are unsure where you are exactly. An endless straight leads through the Tabernas Desert, passing even through dried-out river beds, until the end of the route is reached in Rioja. In between as the only signs of civilisation, the ruins of film sets that have long since been swallowed up again by the desert. At the end, only one question remains unanswered: can the publicly accessible Circuito de Almería Formula 1 racetrack, located just a few miles away, stand up to comparison with the real route?