Arid lands of Almeria — Tabernas, Alhamilla and Sorbas

• Badlands — soft rock cut into ridges and gullies by sudden rain. The look of Tabernas.
• Rambla — a dry river bed that only runs after a storm.
• Esparto — a tough grass harvested here for centuries for rope, baskets and mats.
• Gypsum karst — caves and sinkholes dissolved in gypsum rather than limestone. Sorbas is built on that.

The basin between Filabres and Alhamilla was sea a few million years ago. When the water left, it left marl and sandstone. Storms do the rest. They do not soak in; they tear channels. That is why the ground looks older than it is at the surface, and why the “nine thousand years of mining” story does not hold. Mining happened. The desert shape is geology and rain, not picks.

Gergal sits on the north side, under Filabres. Rainfall here is unreliable — around three hundred millimetres in a kind year, far less in a bad one. Esparto still covers the slopes. A few plant species in those stands are found nowhere else in Europe. The village is a pause, not a monument.

From there the road crosses the Tabernas basin toward Turrillas, a small place on the shoulder of Alhamilla. The views are the ramblas: pale, empty watercourses that look like Mediterranean rivers with the water missing. Cerro Alfaro, the hump on the skyline, has turned up in Indiana Jones and in Black Mirror. You can walk a marked track toward it. Heat and shade decide how far, not the mileage.

• Tabernas Desert — map

The cameras arrived in the 1950s because the basin could stand in for almost anywhere dry. Sergio Leone built the American West here: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, then Once Upon a Time in the West. Clint Eastwood’s poncho and Ennio Morricone’s score are welded to these gullies. David Lean used the wider province for Lawrence of Arabia. Spielberg brought Harrison Ford and Sean Connery back for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — the tank and desert runs use ramblas such as Benavides, known locally as La Tortuga; the beach scene with the tank is Monsul, on the Cabo de Gata coast, a different stop. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian, Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, and episodes of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Penny Dreadful and Black Mirror have all borrowed the same pale ground.

Three of Leone’s towns are still standing just off the N-340a: Oasys Mini Hollywood, Fort Bravo and Western Leone. They put on stunt shows and sell a ticket. Worth it if you have children or you want to walk a saloon street. The landscape Leone actually pointed a camera at is free, from the public road.

South of the basin the ground rises into the Sierra Alhamilla, a mid-height range whose high point, Colativi, reaches 1,387 metres. Holm oak still holds on some slopes — an old wood for a dry mountain — and birds of prey use the ridges. After the white of Tabernas the green, such as it is, feels like another country. The road does not need an all-day hike. A viewpoint and a short walk are enough to feel the change.

• Colativi Peak — map
• Sierra Alhamilla — map

East again, the rock changes. Around Sorbas the basin is gypsum. Water eats it. The result is a karst of sinkholes, galleries and caves — Los Yesos de Sorbas — quite unlike the limestone caves further west. The River Aguas surfaces here and looks almost indecent: a living stream against the steppe. Birds of prey and dry-country species use both the water and the open ground.

Sorbas village sits on a tufa ledge above the river. The caves are a guided visit, not a wander on your own. Leave time if that is why you came. The road across the yesos is the other half of the day: the shape of the land from the car, then one underground hour.

• Los Yesos of Sorbas — map
• River Aguas — map

Gergal, Turrillas, the Sierra Alhamilla and Sorbas sit on one inland loop. It is a car day from Almeria city, or a long day from the Costa del Sol.