A great wild camp

It seems that everywhere in Spain is that much more extreme than we are used to, yet still commonplace. We were driving south on our second day and upon reaching signs for a mirador we pulled in to the empty car park. In true Grand Canyon style we were a few steps away from a drop-off into a huge canyon.

It was spectacular, OK not the Grand Canyon but nevertheless as an almost undocumented feature in the books it rates pretty highly. Down in the bottom is a campsite. It was too early to stop and in any case the ground was waterlogged. Here's the thing about Spring this year, northern Europe has had the best weather for years during May and yet here in the south (west) it has been cool and wet. There is more evidence for this on most fields where masses of run off has covered the roads with soil and the crops have been washed away. I presume these are Spring sown crops as the plants are too small to hold themselves into the ground.

We toured around a green road on the map, these are routes that are obviously "with interest". Near to Cuenca in the Serrania de Cuenca we stopped to walk into La Ciudad Encantada (the Enchanted City). This is a huge area of rock formations which are accessed in an easy 3km loop. They are created through a process called Karstification (I think) and it's Dolomitic rock being eroded by water and Carbon Dioxide. The formations seem to be more heavily eroded at the base and creates a plethura of interesting shapes, many of which have been likened to ship hulls, lizards, bears and so on. It was a great walk and included the obligatory limestone pavement.

 One night at a campsite (in order to empty our already full Porta Potti, was followed by the search for another wild camp. We are using an app called park4night  where travellers have logged good and not so good places to stay for free. In this case we found the best location, on a track below a minor road and no-one around other than a sheep farmer (and they are usually ok kinds of people).

It's almost as if someone had started to construct a campsite there as it was partly terraced and there were some deliberate tree plantings. However starting and not completing projects is a common human failing and these part constructions are found all over Greece as well as Spain and Portugal (in our experience).

Dawn went all Spanish on me that evening and we ate the remaining food that we had brought with us. So potatoes and green beans were boiled and then stirred with a six egg omlette mix to create our own version of Tortilla. It was perfect and washed down with a beer, coffee and the Sloe gin that we also take on holiday.