Hotel Cerro de Hijar, Spain

> For contact details, availability and booking, see greentraveller's full listing of Hotel Cerro de Hijar 

The hotel is just an hour inland from Malaga in a remote part of Andalucía that's yet to be touched by the sprawling development creeping up from the Costa del Sol. There are four suites and 14 large bright double rooms with the kind of mountain views you'd only expect to see after a day's hiking; I could see all the way to the sea from my balcony...  

There's excellent local Andalucían food served in the restaurant (below), and while it's a relatively large country hotel with an outdoor swimming pool, all the rubbish is recycled, and each year the three Spanish owners have introduced a new eco feature, such as solar heating for the water and a waste water irrigation system.  Two kilometres down a winding mountain road is the spa village of Tolox where there’s a natural bathing  pool fed from a mountain spring. From the hotel, you can hire a local guide for walks and explore the Sierra Nevada National Park by bike or on horseback.

Rooms from €66, breakfast €8, dinner from €35. Bikes €10 a day, horse-riding €12 an hour. An edited version of this article, by Richard Hammond, was first published in the Guardian.

> For contact details, availability and booking, see greentraveller's full listing of Hotel Cerro de Hijar. 

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