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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3072 |
12th March 2017 Hiking - Walking: Sendero del Pedro Lopez Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Sunny periods and cooler. Max Speed: Distance Covered: 10 miles (Nautical Miles - unless stated otherwise) Saturday 11th March – Relax, travel, little walk and wildlife watch:) – sunny and hot! Good night at our spot near La Pexa on the back road to Guadix with the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains as a backdrop:) A few cars on the nearby road and some dozy hunters with rifles making pig noises (!) failed to spoil our nice relaxing morning. We managed our exercises in the sun and I even managed a good outdoor wash including my hair and it wasn’t even my birthday! Left about eleven and discovered there was a dam just around the corner with a half full lake and loads of parking but we think our spot was better. We were soon on the A-92N a near motorway standard road and we could whiz along while still enjoying the most stunning scenery. Mile after mile of beautiful pink blossom fruit trees with mountains both side of the road:) I said yesterday that we wouldn’t make Tarifa this time but we were wrong because a few miles past Baza we saw the sign to Tarifa!!! Obviously not the windsurfing Mecca near Gibraltar, but the dead-end hamlet surrounded by pink trees. We had to have a quick detour for some photos:) Mag then had a drive as she hadn’t done much in Spain. We were headed for the Parque Regional de la Sierra de Espuna as we heard about it on an advert on Spectrum Radio when we were here a few weeks ago, and thought it sounded intriguing. Turning off at Totana we headed up to the hills. With lunch approaching we saw a large Jesus on a hill – the Ermite de las Huertas – which was up a single windy track with Mag still driving! she was a bit worried we might meet something coming the other way but we escaped that!! There was lots of God world sculptures on the way up and a Mirador with great views but the local idiots had discovered it as there was litter everywhere, the Spanish don’t deserve this lovely country as they are intent on spoiling it with crass high rise, graffiti and loads of litter everywhere:( With me back at the wheel we made a quick sightseeing stop at Aledo with a castle tower at the end of the village accessed by narrow streets. They even had a mock up siege catapult at the top. The way down was even more scary as our van only just squeezed through! Now following the signs to the Parque we headed up past the busiest restaurant in the area (probably what the advert was for!) towards a huge cliff with a golf ball radar on top – the Morron de Espuna at 1583m. This dominated the area and we couldn’t believe our route would take us nearly to the top. We turned right to a recreation area in the pine woods with a café and lots of scouts camping but the road just went up and up. Past gates that could be closed if necessary, past the rangers hut with two 4x4 parked, past several nutters biking up in 25 degrees, past no camping signs, Miradors, past a couple of carpark’s and then just short of the very top we had to turn around as it was a military base with no access:( We had by now spotted loads of vultures soaring the large cliff at the end so we backed into a tight spot on a sharp bend scrambled up to a rocky outcrop and spent ages watching these huge majestic birds glide in the warm air with loads more vultures watching from the cliffs:) It was then down to a small car park with a few hikers cars parked and got a lovely spot in the sunshine for a cuppa, we didn’t think you were allowed to stay in the park overnight but decided to have a walk. We had seen from higher up that there was some stone circular building scattered in the pine forest near where we had parked. The noticeboard said they were the Los Posos de la Nieve de Cartagena, which turned out to be fantastic deep round buildings with rock walls, some with the domed roofs still intact made from thousands of little clay tiles. The last one had been renovated with a spiral staircase leading to the bottom. There are 38 in the area of which 25 are here and they were used for collecting and storing snow and supplying ice for miles around through most of the year!! So in fact they are just huge refrigerators – just amazing what you find up a mountain in the middle of nowhere. We walked back to the van collecting some massive pine cones on the way. We had another cuppa and read in the last of the sunshine. Then as the sun was disappearing I had a walk to the notice board to check some facts. I saw something I had never seen before; nine caterpillars nose to tail playing follow the leader across the carpark! I couldn’t leave them to be run over as the hikers were leaving so I put them on some kitchen roll and put them safely back in the woods. It was getting a little chilly now so we were in the van when I got another shock as a little red fox ran past the back of the van!!! It headed straight over the carpark to a bag of rubbish left by others (!!!! grrrrr) and promptly set about seeing if there was anything tasty to eat? I followed with the camera as the fox tucked into sardine juice and lager tins and sadly cardboard! Mag had followed me over and we watched from the carpark wall with the fox just the other side. It seemed very hungry so Mag returned to the van to fetch some bacon which it absolutely loved. Then we had made a friend for life as it followed us back to the van and just sat on the wall wanting more! I then broke all the don’t feed the wildlife rules by giving it several chocolate biscuits which it nearly took right out of my hand, taking them one at a time to the woods to eat. In the end, we had to shut the door as it was just sitting outside begging! We think this is her party piece, tapping up the returning hikers for their leftovers as she was not in the least bit frightened of us. It was just an amazing experience being so close to a wild creature just as good as spotting the tortoise earlier in the holiday! We decided to take a chance and stop here the night, the last car left with the walkers getting back just in time as darkness fell. So, we are all alone again up high in the middle of nowhere – we just love this van:) Sunday 12th March – Hike ***** Sendero del Pedro Lopez – 10 miles, out 6 hrs! Sunny periods and cooler. After six sunny days in a row we woke to cloud today and cooler:( Still managed to do exercises but needed a sweatshirt on today. The little carpark was filling up with hikers setting off left and right. Then a group of 20 noisy walkers invaded the carpark from the highest mountain, looked at the notice board and set off towards the Los Posos de la Nieve de Cartagena or old mountain refrigerators! The wind had picked up but I didn’t fancy a trip to the sea so tricked Mag a bit into a walk, she had said that she didn’t want to do the 5 hour, 17 km circular Sendero del Pedro Lopez because with all the skiing and hiking we have done it seemed too far! She would have been happier with one half the distance! So, I said shall we pack some snacks and go for a walk in the mountains, which she was more than happy to do :) We packed the yummy Lidl seed finger bread sticks, two oranges, a bottle of water and 6 mini chocolate bars, setting off at 11.08 in sweatshirts as the cooling breeze had reduced the recent very high temperatures making it much better for walking. We soon caught up with the large group of hikers as they had stopped for a bite and rest at the first two ice houses. I wanted to walk around several of the circular buildings to get a track on the GPS so I did, walking through their picnic! We carried on including a small detour to the renovated one which was a little off the path. We scrambled back to the main track through lovely Maritime pines, a beautiful green with enormous pine cones and all the time Mag was planting Sequoia seeds collected from Levington! Not allowed we are sure but she has been looking for somewhere they might thrive since she put a pine cone on the hearth at home and as it warmed up the seeds fell out. The ice houses now behind us we climbed gently up to reveal stunning views of the surrounding rugged mountains and Mag found another of what I had seen last night in the car park, a caravan of caterpillars, but not the nine in a row I saw yesterday, there must have been at least 50 blindly following the leader to who knows where. I think they have silk nests in the pine trees and just fall to the ground when big enough, sadly we did see several caterpillar massacres where the convoy had been attacked by ants and sucked dry where they stood:( Getting to a junction on the track you could either turn left going down or right up to the ridge. The large group caught us up and went left which made up our mind as we turned right. The track is wide enough for a 4x4 and is used by mountain bikes. Being a Sunday there were several out but we were glad not to be on our bikes - even though the path was good a lot of the way there was some serious bumpy up and down! It was pretty walking along the high plateau with loads of vultures soaring past the high point of this walk the Pedro Lopez at 1568m. The circular walk looked fairly easy so we continued. Mag had never been fooled by my trick and continued to take the mickey most of the way round, doing impressions of how I had explained my fake plan! I had taken a pic of the map so roughly knew where we were but it just went on and on, up and down getting further away from the Morron de Espuna at 1583m where the van was! Getting peckish we stopped a little short of half way and we had been walking for nearly three hours. From our vantage point we could see the return path around the next corner. Refreshed from eating half our snacks we continued past the turning point to the homeward leg which according to the map is longer. I think I hadn’t really anticipated how far this walk was and had bittern off a little more than we could chew but at least we had sunny periods now and the sweatshirts had come off. At a ruined old farmhouse, I saw an animal’s bum disappear and just around the corner we saw two wild goats in the woods:) They stopped and stared at us for a while before disappearing. We had to get past a huge rock cliff to our left so we could climb out of this forest which unfortunately meant walking down a long way! They even directed us off the track to a single path before the long climb out. You could use the windy track or a more direct but much steeper path, we used a combination of both and were much relieved to see the sign post where the track splits at 4.24! We still had 45 minutes back to the van but at least we were on the last leg! Back at the van at 5.15 after nearly six hours out, walking ten miles, what an adventure. I then had to sort out a huge blister on my little toe and try to sort out some itchy insect bites with anti-histamine cream! While typing the blog on the laptop our little friend, the Vixen from last night made a brief appearance but no tit-bits today so she left walking down the road! Started to knit a square for Hannah and Robs baby blanket but why too knackered to finish! Photo Gallery Here |
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