Once
a week the group walks, generally starting a short car ride from the campsite.
Jan and Maryon, a Dutch couple who live on site, are the organisers. It’s
always a 10:30 am start, on the dot: latecomers are reprimanded!
We’re
all on time, so no lines or detentions today, and drive to the start of a
circular walk in the local hills about 10 miles away. Parking up at the bottom
of the track, we set off. Parking is generally easy in Spain outside of the
cities as there is so much unfenced scrub land available. We’re taking an early
breather here, having just ascended a steep gradient.
Onwards and upwards
on todays excellent path, a well maintained dirt road as can be seen from the
photo above. Often our walks take us on ancient donkey tracks; however, as there
aren’t too many ancient donkeys around these days, these routes are often crumbling
in disrepair.
Looking down at
this early stage in the walk it’s noticeable how green parts of the countryside
are. In spite of the low annual rainfall in this area, the winter showers have
greened up the flowers, shrubs and weeds.
It’s worth pointing
out that the white bits in the picture are plastic greenhouses. They are
everywhere in this region and used for forcing crops of strawberries,
cucumbers, peppers and, above all, tomatoes. Higher up in the
walk, the landscape takes on the arid appearance typical of southern Spain.
Now we’ve reached
the highest point, still on good unmetalled roads, with a distant panorama as
the air is so clear.
The roads are built
on firm stone foundations and surfaced with compacted stone chippings,
thereby easy to maintain. In the UK, we’ve always looked down on these as
primitive, inferior carriageways. However, for local roads where speed and low
traffic volume apply, would this form of construction not be preferable to our
deeply potholed tarmac roads which cost a fortune to repair, money which councils say they
haven’t got?
Looking next at the
panorama rather than our group, the sea is clearly visible about 10 miles away.
No prizes for spotting the tomato greenhouses in the distance. Our road yet to
travel is also visible on the left-hand hill.
The road enables access
for people living in these hills, generally in smallholdings like the one
beneath. The groups of buildings always look higgledy-piggley and poorly looked
after, but maybe that’s of secondary importance to trying to scratch a living
from this parched land.
One further delight
at this time of the year is the blossoming of the fruit trees. We guessed that
this one was a cherry.
Back to the cars, and
a coffee (or beer) stop on the way back: anothersplendid walk in lovely
weather even if the wind had a cold edge to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment