29th Dec: A Walk in Cava Grande Gorge

The Cava Grande Natural Reserve starts two miles from the campsite, where the Cassibile River flows into the sea. At this point the terrain is fairly flat, but the canyon walls build as the Reserve follows the river back into the hills. It’s a good dirt track to start, with scrub vegetation on either side interspersed with orange and lemon groves. The path follows roughly the course of the river

 

It’s a great habitat for wildlife, but the birds flit past too quickly to photograph, so you’ll have to make do with a large green lizard and an unidentified butterfly.

As the hills start to rise on either side, we notice lots of doors and windows cut into rocks far up on the slopes on the opposite side of the river. Later the internet  reveals these to be cave dwellings which were occupied from BC times up to the last century. The info’s pretty vague so I don’t know any more than that. You’ll have to supply your own Flintstones images for life way back when in Cavagrande Rock Village.

We pass olive trees, as well as the oranges and lemons, and one of these presents a most unusual gnarled shape of three trunks growing out of the one base. It’s obviously very old and worth a photo.

Moving on up the valley we come across an abandoned mill outside which we ate our packed lunch. The interior looks like it could spring back into life straight away if you knew how to operate it and knew what you were supposed to be milling. The valley has only the olives, oranges and lemons so maybe it’s a marmalade mill.

 The dirt track merges with a partly tarmacked road leading to a disused hydroelectric generating complex; thereafter it peters out into a barely traceable hillside path. We follow the path for a while to get a view of the steepening valley, as the photo shows, with one of the derelict hydroelec buildings on the valley floor.

The cliffs here are about 1,500 feet high and carry on for a further 5 miles. This further on part is reached from a different access point that involves descending 800 feet to the river before starting to explore, and then 800 feet back up at the end.  We’ll stick with this side, thanks.

It’s easy to dismiss more modern structures in favour of ancient buildings. On our return, I was struck by how harmoniously this railway bridge fitted in to the Reserve, with its elegant arches spanning the river. We also went under the recent motorway bridge on the way back, a real slab which I won’t be reproducing!

The Reserve was unobtrusively managed, so no obvious signs of intervention: in fact no signs at all, so you didn’t get any info as you went round or on which paths to take. But all part of the charm and, really, a smashing day out.