The Broken Rocks

 Sounds like a forbidding place created by convicts’ hard labour. We’ll keep you in suspense!

We drive up into the hills and park at the start of an originally well made dirt road, now rough and rutted where erosion would prevent the passage of even a land rover. But it’s fine for walking.

We’re heading towards the sea, and catch glimpses of it as the dirt road twists and turns. Lucky we’re not in a vehicle as we’d probably be car sick!

Turn the next corner and a huge seascape spreads out in front of us. We’re looking towards Cartagena harbour in the distance. This is a major port with deep water berths for cruise ships, a large oil refinery, and the main base for the Spanish Mediterranean fleet.

Plodding on, keeping the same sea panorama in view, we arrive at the broken rocks. It’s just a natural jagged rock formation, so no sinister overtones.

We are returning to the car by another route, and I take one last photo before the sea disappears altogether. The one building visible, overlooking the sea, is known locally as the Custom House, now empty. This area was  known for smugglers in the past: ideal, given its remote and difficult terrain, so it would seem a good place for the Customs to have an outpost.

The return path is nowhere near as wide or well specified as the dirt road to the broken rocks. However, it has been deliberately hacked out with any steep sides shored up for safe use by humans or donkey.

The question, of course, is why. The path threads through complete and total wilderness, much greener than usual because of this year’s abnormal rainfall. Perhaps a clue is to be found in this long abandoned sheepfold.

Or even more probably, in this dry stone wall next. There are many of these walls above the track creating terraces back up the hillsides. We realise that we are looking at the remains of subsistence farming  of the past and the track their access road. The locals must have lived an unimaginably hard and frugal life. Ministering to the tourists today is a more attractive option.

The track eventually joins the dirt road from the Custom House, and thence back to the car. A walk with incredible views, and a peek into Spain’s rural past.