Caminito del Rey is a timber boardwalk one metre wide, pinned to a vertical cliff as much as 105 metres above the Guadalhorce river. The route runs one way, north to south: eight kilometres in all, of which 2.9 are the walkway itself. Rock brushes one shoulder and the drop opens off the other. Where the Gaitanejo narrows to under ten metres wall to wall, the sky above thins to a bright strip and green water grinds through the shade far below. Griffon vultures nest on these ledges, and with wingspans near three metres they come off the thermals at eye level. Near the end a 35-metre suspension bridge carries you across the void, and then the gorge opens onto the blue of the reservoirs.
The old path is still there, a metre under your boots the whole way: broken slabs, floors missing altogether, rail ends hanging out over the drop. It was cut between 1901 and 1905 as a service route for the men running two hydroelectric plants on the river. The name came in 1921, when King Alfonso XIII crossed it to open the Conde del Guadalhorce dam — the king's little path. Then it was left to itself. Concrete fell away, the handrail rusted off, and long stretches shrank to bare steel beam bolted into the rock. Five people died on it in 1999 and 2000, and the province closed both ends. A restoration led by the Málaga architect Luis Machuca hung the new walkway just above the ruined one. It reopened in March 2015 and took the Europa Nostra Grand Prix, Europe's top heritage award, the following year. Around 300,000 people a year now walk it, in a helmet, on a timed ticket, and a strong wind still shuts the gate.