Moving on to Ruidera

After spending a week at Turrie exploring the coast and surrounds in Spain’s desert, where pirates historically called there place home, and Clint Eastwood starred in many American western, we headed north west 4 hrs into the hills to find water and green.

Bronni found this interesting place on air BnB in a funny little village called Ruidera in a national park.

‘Parque Natural Las Lagunas’

It is colder, slightly greener surrounds (although this is relative)  and very Spanish. The place has 15 lakes, a lot of cycle ways and if Trip advisor is anything to go by it is the place where the Spanish go for the holidays. Most of the British and European’s go to the beaches. The Spanish go to the hills.

Of course it is not the Spanish holidays and we are in a block of possibly 150 apartments and all the rest are empty.  Conversation with the owners was entire through google translate as neither could speak or understand the others and in ½ hr we walked most of the streets to check the restaurants  and tapas menus;(where they have one) for grub tonight. We are here for 3 days to bike some of the many trails.

Outside of the park the main industry is agriculture and energy as we drove for several hours through large stonefruit (all in flower) regions, olive groves and recently sown grain under 1000’s of wind generators. The soil appears to be a red stony volcanic ash and requires artificially watering to be productive. The waste lands still look like desert although there are a few more trees around that in the Almeria regions.