Perched high–up above the valleys and peering over to lands beyond the park, Casa Bolero sits in a position of power and dominance over beautiful landscapes that could never be imagined by any being other than nature. It may sound melodramatic, but: (a) staying at that one–roomed hut was a true liberation from the computerised lives that each and every one of us lives; and (b) if I put a little poetic romanticism in place then I can almost justify our difficulties with leaving the house in the morning. Sore heads didn’t help either.

Packed up and ready to face ‘The Wilderness’, finally we left Casa Bolero, bid farewell to the nearest neighbours and tried not to look back too longingly at the tea making facilities that we were leaving.

It’s funny, sometimes on bike trips to resorts in the Alps, you can come to find yourself almost addicted to ‘hunting’ for the next fresh track, a trail you haven’t yet ridden or pretty much anything with the word ‘secret’ associated with it. In doing so, you can often miss the point and particularly what I consider to be the most fun part of riding bikes, the emotion that all adventure sports enthusiasts are ultimately seeking…flow. Riding a trail once can be raucous, exhilarating and can contain some elements of flow. But session a trail, or ride it day after day and you come to know its ins and outs, you know the feel of each roller before your wheels have even reached it and you anticipate every turn.

We dumped out kit in a derelict cave house, one of many hundreds like it that are remnants of Spain’s fascist era that drove so many families into these hills to escape the grasp of the country’s stern dictator, Franco. Next to the cave entrance passed the trail that we had ridden each day since our arrival. Dropping in from the tarmac that provides an easy pedal up and unfortunately the option of shuttling (some holiday firms from Malaga are bringing customers to ride these stupendous trails with the ease and drear of a van uplift – something sure to end the relaxed laws on mountain biking in the area if it continues), we flowed and floated our way down perfection realised.

Nothing about El Chorro screams fame or fortune – the place is truly bizarre in that there really should be throngs of tourists, but strangely the village remains a tranquil haven for introverts and escapees. Head over the mountain and to the other side of the park, though, and you discover where they keep all the day–trippers.

Having spent what turned out to be a warm and comfortable night in our cave, our perfect sleep perhaps aided by a beer or two that we had managed to forage, we woke late once again and made our way to granny’s train station café for another cortado y tostada before leaving our bags in the trustworthy hands of her good self. We climbed up and out, right out of our bubble in fact and toward the aforementioned tourists. This is where you find El Chorro’s most famous trail, called El Moabo, which is a slickrock bonanza and unlike anything you can ride elsewhere in Europe…so we did just that and rode it.

Riding around the perimeter of the Guadalhorce reservoir, the body of water of which King Alfonso was so proud that he had to have a direct path assembled through treacherous gorges at the expense of many workers’ lives, we bumped into several groups (groups of Spaniards having wind–battered picnics at a maximum radius of ten metres from their cars) and ex–pat Brits out walking in the brisk air.

We trundled along and eventually made our way up what must have been the steepest and most annoying mountainside in the entire area. At the top we sheltered behind a rock from the relentless battering of the wind with a vertical drop of around a thousand metres in front of us. From here we could see out over a valley that can only be accessed via Alfonso’s walkway, a train that doesn’t stop or by a good day’s worth of effort, prior planning and the willingness to rough it for a night.

We watched vultures swoop and soar for a while then turned our back on the wilderness and made our way back down the beat–up trail. Rolling out the end of the ride we collected our bags, sipped a final hot drink and jumped on the train out of there.