Tuesday 5th April Castella to Alcoi

I must admit that I was starting to think that I had seen all the fireworks in Andalusia and that the landscape was not going to be as interesting at least until I got to the Pyrenees. Today's a walk, however, had just about everything and has raised my expectations as to what else I might see in Valencia.

In total the walk was about 34 kilometres with 1000 metres of climb. We started walking at 8.15 and were in Alcoi by about 4.30. The weather was warm but not too hot, a good walking temperature.

Walking through the gorge to the north east of Castalla

Castalla sits in a fairly broad valley going roughly east to west and the first thing to do is finish crossing the valley and get to the mountains on the northern side. The route takes you to the mountains, parallel with them and then through them, firstly via a gorge and then, turning east, along a gentle valley. Particularly at this early part of the day this was a really nice walk, a mix of pine trees and cleared fields.


Once you get to the top of the first pass, at about 900 metres, you see the higher mountains on the other side of the second valley which form the centre piece to the Parc Natural del Carrascal de Font Roja. Getting up to them involves a brilliant ridge climb which levels out at 1200 metres. The climb is about 500 metres and although it wasn't that clear you could just make out the Mediterranean to the south and the passes crossed on the three previous days. Towards the east you can see Alcoi and to the north tomorrow's walk to Bocairant.

Climbing up Menejador (1352 mts)

The next bit was may favourite involving a gentle descent down through ancient woodland. Trees included different types of evergreen oak, Valencian and Holm, as well as maple, flowering ash and white beam. This was a special nature reserve inside the natural park and the ancient woodland had perhaps survived because it was hard to get with a steep valley on one side and limestone cliffs on the other. At the end of this stretch was a very nice visitor centre.

In the Font Roja Natural Park

It was then a steep descent to the bottom of the valley, a wrong turn which took us to a wonderful but impassable gorge. Retracing our steps we found the right route into Alcoi only to loose it again after about three kilometres. Deciding to take the road for the last stretch we were rewarded with some really interesting victorian industrial buildings clinging to the cliffs above the town.

Gorge near Alcoi

Alcoi is quite a big place with a population of around 150,000. It looks a great place, lots of fabulous turn of the century buildings including some which look like the Guadi buildings you see in Barcelona. I was particularly impressed with the street lights.

Amazing street lights in Alcoi

Monday April 4th Elda to Castalla

After three pretty average days today's walk was a distinct improvement. The weather was a bit fresher and the route went higher. Not a long day, the walk was only 22 kilometres, but with over 600 metres of climb I was above the 1000 metre contour for the first time for a while.

After finding your way out of Elba, walking along roads for a couple of kilometres you then go through a slightly scary tunnel underneath the main Madrid Alicante motorway. The tunnel was slighty scary because it was long, pitch black, and in the middle, mysteriously parked was a black BMW with sleeping occupants. How the car got there and why the occupants considered a motorway subway a good place to have a sleep is question I would prefer others to ask.

Although not spectacular the walk got better and better and views looking backwards in particular got bigger. Walking along forest trails you were travelling through increasingly mature pine woodlands, occasional olive groves, fields of barley and open hill sides which perhaps had been the victim of forest fires. Not a lot or wildlife after the abundance of Andalusia but I did get a picture of a bird which is a bit of a mystery. My assumption was that it was a Jay, there are a lot of Jays here, but do Jays have a crest?

View back towards Elba

Hooper 

The last bit of climbing was a lot steeper than anything I've done for the last few days, made worse by the fact that Christine Durrant, who is walking with me at the moment, is a very fast walker. The stiffness in left ankle had completely gone but has reappeared in the right one. I'm a bit disappointed with the lack of advice from my medical team at home but I have been able to get huge Ibuprofen tablets which in the UK would only be given to a horse.

The top wasn't quite a pass and you had to walk for another couple of miles before the final descent into Castalla. On the way in we saw deer and boar but in strange place which seemed to be half zoo, half farm. Much preferred the glimpses I got in the Cazorla.

Captive 

Castalla definitely fits with the emerging model that the more prosperous a place looks the more it's been hit by the recession. Relative to its size the extent of the development looks massive. The castle towering above the town looks completely restored, as does much of the old town centre but the huge housing development on the southern edge of town has come to a grinding halt.

Castalla

We are staying in brand new hotel, the Don Jose. Got here in time for lunch and well set up for a longer walk to Alcoi tomorrow and the big game.

Lingering Impressions from Andalucia

Trying to remember where you have been when you stay somewhere new every day is a challenge. New experiences start to crowd out the old and I feel I need to nail down what I found interesting and different before it all goes.

It goes without saying that the things that surprised and interested me are a reflection of my own experiences and who I am. It's also influenced by the nature of the experience I'm having, largely on my own, at the beginning of a long journey and critically with only a limited ability to communicate with the Spanish.

Spain is a modern democratic country, the best footballing country in the world, and London is full of young confident and attractive Spaniards. It feels almost impolite to say things which are negative. I was however surprised at the poverty in Andalucia. Walking through Andalucia also made me reflect on the some differences with England and how, in many instances, Andalucia compared favourably.

Andalucia is a poor part of Spain. It's per capita income is less than 75 per cent of the Spanish average which itself is 10 per cent less than the UK average. The Spanish labour market is famously inefficient with an uncompetitive and expensive formal sector and a huge unskilled informal sector. I suspect the informal sector is particularly large in Andalucia in general and in the agriculture sector in particular.

I don't understand the olive oil industry, but wonder if it's one the factors explaining relative levels of poverty in Andalucia. What Saudi Arabia is to crude oil, Spain is to olive oil and the oil fields are in Andalucia. Despite the commodity crisis, and the shortage of just about everything anyone wants to eat, there is glut of olive oil. 12,000 olive oil workers have demonstrated over the last month demanding that the EU puts olive oil into storage to push up prices. Producing olives is a hideously manual process, harvesting involves shaking olives from a tree and collecting them in nets, and as a farmer's boy I can tell you that most of the equipment being used came of the production line before I was born 55 years ago. Yet you see more olive trees being planted. I couldn't help but think that the attachment to a particularly type of agriculture was making people in Andalucia poor.

Perhaps linked to poverty I have left Andalucia with the impression that people live in crowded towns in each others pockets. The countryside feels empty. There is no English sprawl or villages neatly positioned three or four miles from each other. Instead you have towns 15 or 20 miles apart, very often clinging to a rock with a castle on top, and just nothing inbetween. Inside the towns there is hardly any "spare" space and distance between the inside of a house and the hustle and bustle of a street is a 9 inch wall.

Living in each others' pockets may or may not be a product of poverty, but a lingering impression was that the Spanish may actually be OK with it. Call me sentimental, and maybe looking for the evidence, but I was left with the impression that these places actually worked well, that there was lots going on at a community level, and that people were looking after each other.

I guess from an English perspective you are left with a slightly unnerving impression that the value we put on space and distance from our neighbours is not necessarily one which is shared by the Spanish. It may even be that the Spanish are not particularly social it's just that the English are antisocial.

As someone with a passing interest (perhaps literally) in local government I also wondered whether an apparent willingness to live in each others pockets made a difference to the way local democracy worked. This is a country where there is lots of local government, where separate administrations exist at really local levels but where otherness of local government which seems to be the English experience doesn't exist.

As I bash on through Murcia and now into the region of Valencia other things start to come into perspective. Not sure yet, bit I suspect that relatively speaking the walking in Andalucia was exceptionally good. How long will it be before it's as green again or before I see as much wildlife. I also suspect that the boom which hit the rest of Spain didn't quite get to Andalucia, but nor did the bust.

Sunday 3rd April Pinosa to Elba

Today's walk was 26 kilometres in overcast, warm and humid conditions, often on roads through countryside which was not very memorable I'm afraid. Not exactly inspirational.

The presence of British immigrants in Spain, evident for the first time yesterday on the approach to Pinosa, becomes increasingly apparent towards Elba. Two characteristics seem to distinguish them from the Spanish: firstly a love of gardens, which are often huge; and, secondly a willingness to pour money into old rotting buildings. There are huge numbers of wonderful old farmsteads all ready for the Grand Design treatment and as you get closer to the bits of Spain where the British congregate than these buildings start to get rescued.

Abandoned "finca"

Apart from the weather being a bit more overcast it was a very similar walk to yesterday's, a gentle climb up out of Pinosa, a short descent and a walk across a wide cultivated valley, another gentle climb and then a long descent into Elba.

At the beginning of the walk across the valley you go through the pretty village of Casas del Senyor. Particularly interesting were the chimneys which emerged at street level from the houses in the terrace below and, later on, the beautiful aqueduct, which I guess dates back to the time of Moors.

Walking on the roof

Moorish Aquaduct in Casas del Senyor 

This dry landscape gets particularly ugly as you approach towns and was especially ugly during the final walk to Elba. The abandoned terraced fields, extensive fly tipping and the municipal tip made everything look completely unloved. Amongst all this, and with an impressive gate, sat Elba's cemetery, already big but with scope for significant expansion.

Huge gate to the crematorium near Elba

Elba by the way is the largest town I have been to so far, a population of over 45,000, and the Spanish centre for the manufacture of shoes.

With a Spanish resident as a walking companion and I'm getting my eye in for signs of the recession. I now understand the difference between the "for sale" sign for property which is being sold in the standard way and a property which has been repossessed by the banks and is subject to a forced sale. You can get very good financing terms with a forced sale. If I needed any further evidence of the immediacy of the recession I got it when I arrived at the hotel which had been booked only a few days ago but had now closed.

Signs of collapsed housing market everywhere

Saturday 2nd April Venta Roman to Pinosa

Nice steady walk today, perhaps a bit low key, but maybe what was needed to get my ankle back on track. It's still a bit swollen but I'm not worried about it any more. What the "injury" has brought home however is how tight my schedule is, how vulnerable it is to anything going wrong, and how fed up I would be if anything did go wrong. I really want to do this walk.

Apart from being the perfect walk for my ankle the walk did not provide a lot to write home about. Miguel kindly took me back the petrol station at Venta Roman and had made me a great pack lunch. Weather was nice, not as hot as yesterday, good weather for walking. 26 kilometres to Pinosa, a very gentle climb, then across a wide valley, another gentle climb, and then a walk down into Pinosa. Just before you get to Pinosa you cross the border from Murcia into Valencia.

Heading east from Venta Roman

The boundary with Valencia

After my last attempt to point to what I thought was an unusual plant, which two people then dismissed as a daffodil, I'm a bit nervous about highlighting what looks like a cross between asparagus and a lupin. Is this interesting or just another display of my ignorance?

Lupin?

Almond and other fruit trees have to a large degree given way to vines which have still to emerge from their winter slumber. Given what they have to produce by September/October then they really have to crack on.

Vines in April

Pinosa is a small town (circa 1100 population) a significant proportion of which are British. The Bed & Breakfast I'm staying at, just outside the town, is actually British owned and the landlady is currently standing for election to the local council. Evidence of the collapse of the Spanish property market is everywhere in Pinosa.

Pinosa

Endless empty flats

The really big news is that for the next couple of weeks or so I have a walking companion, Christine Durrant, and logistical back-up, provided by Christine's husband John. Some of the walking in Valencia is a bit remote, accommodation difficult to find, so this should work really well.

John was able get the Tottenham Wigan game on his laptop, given the game on Tuesday, 0-0 was entirely predictable.

Friday April 1st Cieza to Venta Roman

Venta Roman is a good place to go to on April Fools day because it's the place that doesn't exist. The Murcia Mountaineering and Walking Association reference it as an end of stage point but apart from that reference it doesn't exist at all on the web. It took me days to work out that it was a petrol station so no chance of any accommodation there.

So I'm staying two nights at the wonderful La Linda Tapada and Miguel picked me up at the petrol station at the end of the walk and will take me back there again tomorrow as I head out of Murcia.

The beginning of the walk, for the first hour or so, was along the road. I joined up with walk from La Linda Tapada but it would have been the same if I had set of from Cieza. My leg was really sore when I started, had been painful all night, and I was getting a bit fed up. Walked slowly and after a while it eased up and in the end, although it is a bit swollen, it was not really a problem.

The most distinctive feature of today's walk was the heat. By the time I finished the 26 kilometres at about 3.30 it was 29 degrees. It was fairly low down, and I'm just a few hundred metres of altitude would have made a big difference, but the sun was incredibly strong and it's only April the 1st.

Having walked past the out of town industrial estate and got onto path proper the countryside matched the heat. Incredibly dry, almost desert like. There were some ancient terraces, and a derelict farmstead, but it really looked like agriculture had been abandoned on this stretch. The best thing about this bit of the walk were the views back to the Almarchon, the mountain I walked around yesterday.

To the east of Cieza - almost a desert

Distant view of the Sierra del Almarchon

Eventually the pine trees reappeared and fruit trees and vines started to become the order of the day. Crossing the final pass and heading down to the petrol station I was suddenly in fruit tree alley, a huge expanse of trees, some of them of under different coloured plastic, obviously a really important centre for growing fruit.

Had a beer in the bar near the petrol station while I waited for Miguel. A brand new dual carriageway was under construction behind it, you can see it in the picture, but work on it has postponed. Unfinished blocks of flats and houses are everywhere but it's the first piece of public infrastructure I seen stopped in it's tracks by the Spanish economic crisis.

Venta Roman - Abandoned motorway in the background

Thursday March 31st Calasparra to Cieza

This was a brilliant days walk with a slightly unfortunate sting in the tail. Scheduled as a 35 kilometre walk I managed to turn it into something in excess of 40, adding some unnecessary and nasty road walking to a trip which would otherwise be on very nice forest trails.

The route essentially takes you along the side of a fairly spectacular sandstone ridge, probably an outlier of the sandstone scenery I was was walking through a couple of days ago, which runs between Calasparra and Cieza.

Managed to get away from the hotel in pretty good time and by 9 had walked out of town and was walking straight into the sun along a route which contoured along the southern side of the ridge. This went on for about 15 kilometres with great views of both the ridge and the plain to the south. This is clearly an area where fire is a serious hazard, workmen were cutting the undergrowth to reduce the risk and further along you could see why, the trees along the whole hill side for several kilometres have been burnt down.

Earth scorched on Sierra del Molino

About half way along you arrived at the Embalse Alfonso XIII, a reservoir where the river running north through a gorge in the ridge had been damned. It was beautiful spot and, as usual, I had it all to myself.

Embalsa Alfonso X111

Heron at Embalsa Alfonso X111

After continuing along the side of the ridge for a few more kilometres you arrive at the undoubted star of the show, the Sierra del Almarchon, a mountain which stands out in really spectacular way, a sort of mini Matterhorn, or the Spanish version of the mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. First impressions are good but actually it gets better as you get to the north and east of it - a really special mountain.

Sierra del Almarchon

Looking back all the time at the mountain you then have to cross a sort of sand bowl, perhaps the debris from the mountain, with deep ravines, before getting back to the contour walk again, this time walking along the northern side of the ridge.

Eventually it's a steep descent from the ridge down into Cieza and, after a very hot day, I arrive there at about 5.30. I had fixed up stay at La Linda Tapada, which is on the other side of the Rio Segura and out of town the north west. Miguel had offered to pick me in Cieza but having worked out where it was on Google Maps the night before I had decided to walk. Two mistakes, it was a lot further than I thought and Google Maps doesn't show all the roads. Instead of the second right it should have been the third right. So at about 7, the battery on my IPhone just about gone, I'm trying to explain to Miguel, who doesn't speak a word of English, where I am. This was a bit stressful. Eventually, and after failed attempts to send him a photo, I get to speak to his son, who is in another place, and we agree that I backtrack to bar and send him the name of the bar. At the bar there is a sign to La Linda Tapada which I had missed. As the crow flies I was about 300 metres from the Hotel and I eventually get there at about 7.45. It's lovely by the way, fantastic home food, and real vegetables.

I have picked up an injury by the way, some tendon or something on the front of my left leg. Very sore but haven't twisted my ankle or anything. I think is because Gareth Bale has picked up an injury in the run in to the Real Madrid game.