Time to move on. We’ve still got a long way to go and tempting as it was to stay on and linger at Camping Los Madriles a few more days (which would have still been nothing compared to the months other aficionados spend there), we can’t afford that kind of luxury.

Besides, moving on provides its own incentive – the addiction and thrill of having sampled something interesting, but energized by the prospect of something new and different. Like the ‘Lone Ranger’ whose mystique only lasts as long as he keeps riding off into the sunset. It could be there’s something of the nomad in all of us, that our default, elemental state is to keep moving in life.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk in Mesopotamia c 2650BC we’re told: “Life is a bridge, cross it but build no house upon it”. And Issa (Jesus) son of Mary is said to have echoed the same words: ”The world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no house upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity, but the world endures but for an hour; spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen”. I love that – “the world endures but for an hour, spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen”. Would Enrique have been satisfied with that as that answer as opposed to the one I gave him? Is this close enough to what ‘spiritual’ means as opposed to institutional faith?

We’re headed for Granada and it’s a fair drive. We pass Mazaron, Saladillo, Totana, Lorca, Cullar and the landscape continues to be stark, arid and rocky.

By the time we reach Guadix and Purullena the humbling heights of Sierra Nevada come into view.

“All these things we’ll one day swallow whole and fade out again and fade out again” wails Thom York of Radiohead. Olive groves line the road again.

At 5pm we arrive at the Beas de Granada campsite, small and cosy, perched high up and with a stunning view of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It’s fairly busy and we meet other friendly Brits there including an ex-head-teacher travelling on his own who we hit it off with, as we tend to with anyone who’s worked in education, and who gives us good advice. The site is perfect to use as a base from which to visit Granada and come back to and most people just catch the bus which stops conveniently just outside the entrance to the site. Our plan however is to drive into Granada the next day, visit Alhambra and the old city and drive to Seville – and this is what we set off to do despite advice that this is a touch too exhausting, which turns out to be quite true as we were to discover.

In the meantime however, we settle in for the night on a good pitch with a great view of Sierra Nevada and Judith makes a very tasty poached Baccalau fish (cod) with new potatoes and asparagus and hollandaise sauce (the high cholesterol content of the latter compensated for by the healthiness of the former or so we hope). All washed down with the rest of the 2013 El Coto Rioja we’d got from a motorway Carrefour. We were never that keen on Rioja, but in Spain at least, it really does taste rather good.

Photo of Beas de Granada at sunset