This is the Custom House, no longer in use, overlooking Cartagena Bay. It is reached by a long rough track and must have been an isolated posting for the customs officers when it was operational. One presumes that any suspicious activities they spotted would have resulted in a boat being launched from the little bay on the photo- the other side is a sheer drop. However, to get down to the bay is a tortuous, time-consuming scramble, which we can testify to, and I wonder how many smugglers got away while the customs officers were laboriously clambering down to their craft.
Stopping for lunch a few coves along from the Custom House, a bizarre sight was observed. Some strange coves indeed were seen, taking to the water and emerging…..starkers! I know I was probably hallucinating in the heat, but John was definitely hard put to finish his banana.
After lunch, some very rough walking. The area is known as the broken rocks, and is clearly a large cliff fall of fairly recent origin as the rocks are jagged with no weathering. One of the party sustained a bad graze here but happily carried on after some makeshift first aid. The air ambulance couldn’t have landed anyway.
The whole walk was over rough, stony, scrubland, but here is the exception: a small cultivated area in the middle of nowhere. It must get its moisture from the gully it’s in. The crop is corn, and looks spindly and weedy by comparison to UK fields. There are numerous disused hillside terraces formerly used to grow produce when there was not the alternative of cheap imports, so why has this patch survived? Is it a secret GM site, perhaps, glowing away in the dark where nobody can see it!
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