Serrato
Written by Geoff Forster
Serrato: We left Benarrabá one beautiful morning in late September.
We headed down the A369 road to Ronda. In Ronda we took the A367 road signposted to Campillos. (It actually goes to Ardales)
We stopped in Cuevas de Becerro for a couple of hours and then drove a little further along the A369 before turning onto the MA477 to Serrato.
We turned off into Serrato and drove up a long street looking for a parking place. All the road edges were marked yellow.
From a distance Serrato looked like a mountain pueblo we're familiar with in the Genal and Guadiaro valleys. There the villages are a random maze of twisting streets with houses at different elevations and angles. Serrato had one long street up to the top of the pueblo with a few side streets. We turned around and drove back down. I'm not sure if this is the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) and Consultorio (Medical Centre) or just the Consultorio.
The pueblo looked well kept. Most of the houses had been modernised.
We didn't spend much time in Serrato. What we saw didn't inspire us to explore the pueblo any further.
This was taken from the MA478 just outside the pueblo.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with Serrato. There are hundreds of white villages in Andalucía. Serrato (in our opinion) just isn't one of the more interesting ones.
A little further on along the (poor) MA478 you climb up into some wonderful Sierras and a pine forest. We carried on along this road into the Sierra de Las Nieves Natural Parque and visited El Burgo. The trees were really growing at this angle.
We've driven passed Serrato a number of times now. The countryside around is beautiful. In summer the fields fill with poppies and Bee Eaters sit on the wires before swooping effortlessly after their prey.
There are millions of worse places than Serrato to live in.