For our Malaga Hinterland exploration we actually based ourselves just over the border in neighbouring Cádiz, in a charming hilltop campsite: Camping Pueblo Blanco, near Olvera.
The province of Cádiz forms the southern extremity of the Iberian peninsula, with Gibraltar at the tip and the eponymous ancient port as its capital. There’s a fair chunk of climbing – it has its own guidebook and thecrag.com lists over a thousand routes – but apart from a quick trip to San Bartolo a few years ago, it’s new territory for Rockaroundtheworld.
We’d mainly chosen our base for access to the Malaga crags covered in the previous two posts, but it turns out there’s a belting little crag within sight of the campsite.
Donde Escalar gave Penon de Zapapaldar three carabiners and 27Crags came up with some rudimentary topos for around 60 routes spread across four sectors.
It’s a 10mins stroll across meadows from a parking lay-by, with the central orange sector being called “UK” (we didn’t work out why), the impressive towers on the left being Atalayas and the main wall of Duende semi-hidden between the two. (Sala de Elfo is out of sight around to the right).
The white fringe on the skyline…
… is the rather impressive town of Olvera, with the campsite just in front.
Duende has 18 routes, from V to 6c, and we ticked more than half of them over the course of a couple of visits.
The topo takes a bit of figuring out (a line drawing without a background photo) until you realise there’s an additional route to the left of Union. This is a good warm-up (about Vish) and much better than its crumbly appearance might suggest.
Here’s a couple of locals on the same route.
There’s a common theme across the whole wall, with tricky starts giving way to much juggier climbing as height is gained – it’s worth persevering. Venus and Union, both 6a+, were probably the pick of the routes we did. Here’s Helen on Lenador, 6a.
Sector Atalayas, just to the left, has a magnificent golden tower, and I couldn’t resist a go at Titan, 7a. A pretty decent effort bar from a very fingery crux around 10m, and encouragingly well bolted.
Zumba que nos Vamos is a 6b+ with a 6c extension up the left side of the tower – didn’t feel any easier!
Enchanting spot and worth a return visit to explore the remaining two sectors.
Also in the vicinity is La Canada (impressive steep orange wall with a dozen routes from 6c+ to 7c+) and a few km over the hill Algamitas which claims a couple of dozen recently re-bolted routes, but which defied attempts to recce on the Web or on the ground.
The biggest concentration of climbing in Cádiz is in the Parc Natural de Sierre de Grazalema, with two main areas around the villages of Grazalema and Benaocaz. We tacked a quick drive-by shufty at the former onto the end of a rainy day recce. Almost 200 routes, but with a northerly aspect and one of the highest rates of precipitation in the country it’s more suitable for a shady retreat from a hot, dry spell (not a problem we’re currently having!)
Another beautiful tucked away spot in the heart of Andalusia to add to the return visit list.
RockAroundTheWorld 