Albarracín is a small village in the hills of east-central Spain. It’s a huge playground for big fans of bouldering, and the most beautiful town in Spain. Every climber should visit this place! The climbing is fantastic, thousands of problems in different areas in the forest. Nevertheless, it’s not only climbers who should visit Albarracín. The little old village of medieval style is stunning beautiful, and is actually rated to be the most beautiful town in Spain several times. Totally understandable, you just can’t avoid getting charmed by it.
After driving 1140km from Antibes in France, we finally reached our destination for the coming month, Albarracín. It wasn’t a drive without bumps in the road, literally. With a flat tire on the caravan, and a campsite with unbelievable stupid gateways, it was such a relief to find Camping Ciudad de Albarracín as one of the best we have visited so far. Ready to welcome Nicolai, our next visitor from Norway.
Bouldering
Albarracín is situated at an altitude of over 1000m above sea level, which makes the air cold and the stone crispy. It was a bit of a change to arrive from shorts and t-shirt in France to down jacket and wool in Albarracín. But are you looking for good climbing conditions, this is superb. Blog post about the bouldering are just around the corner.
We really enjoyed our month in Albarracín – loved the bouldering and the people. Nicolai visited us for 9 fantastic days, and during this time we also met Ola, a Norwegian climber who stayed at the same campsite as us. We also met a Finnish couple, Ansku and Eero who we hanged out with on the crag, and the pizzeria. Hope to see all of them soon again. Bouldering is a social activity and lots of climbers had found their way to Albarracín, especially in the weekends. Spanish people are great, they are very welcoming and friendly. Even though the English is not the best, we always found a way to communicate.
Dinner party in our crib with Nicolai (left) and Ola (right)
Ansku and Eero from Finland
Hiking & Sightseeing
There are plenty of hiking possibilities in the area, which is well marked and easy to find. We found a varied and beautiful trail starting from Dinopolis (google maps: Mar Nummus, with an enormous dinosaur on the roof), walking through the valley, passing several bouldering sectors in the forest and then walking down a hill back to Dinopolis. There is also a trail around the little village, outside of the wall, which gives you a good view and nice pictures of Albarracín. Don’t forget to take the walk the whole way up to the wall, through all the narrow and charming streets in the centre of the village.
Hiking
Christoffer and Nicolai enjoying the view
The cage down to the left is one of many cages around in the forest. These are parts of the Albarracin Cultural Park protecting prehistoric rock-art.
Foto: Nicolai Antonsen
The Wall and Old Town
On the wall
On our way to the top. You can walk the whole way up.
There is a marked trail on the other side of the river vith a nice view over the wall.
This bridge leads you to a very nice path that goes around the wall.
Eat and drink
We’re not out eating very often, but sometimes after a long day in the forest, it tastes really good with pizza. Pizzeria Monty became a favorite both for eating out and take away. Pay attention to the opening hours in low season though. We went there super hungry a couple of times only to find it closed, which was such a bummer. Obviously, they were open only in the weekends in the end of November. A lot of places are closed on Mondays. We found only one little tapas bar open on Christoffer’s birthday, so no pizza for him that day either.
Don’t miss out on the little bakery, the Panadería. Prepare for waiting if you’re not first in line when it opens. It’s very popular, with good reason!
There are places to buy your groceries in Albarracín, but these are pretty small, so plan your days if you’re cooking at home and do your main shopping in Teruel.
You can’t go to Albarracín to boulder without visit the one and only climbing shop in the village, Sofa Boulder. A very nice shop, with friendly staff. Here you can also rent crash pads.
Camping Ciudad de Albarracín
- Very nice sanitary facilities, clean all the time, toilet paper and hot water
- They have washing machine, but not a dryer (wish they had – it was a bit too cold for our laundry to dry in a day, even in windy conditions and sun)
- Friendly and helpful staff
- We stayed at the top of the campsite, it’s more exposed for wind (and it was a lot of wind especially during night), but we had sun all day and a spectacular view over the town. This area of the campsite has large, well marked pitches on grovel. Perfect for our caravan.
- The campsite has a restaurant, and you can buy fresh bread.
- You can rent crash pads here, if you need. Also buy the guidebook for bouldering.
- The cottages seems very nice, next time we’re here without a caravan, we’ll look into that
Our fantastic view from the caravan
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