Andalucian Hills

It’s always a little bit of a risk when you find a ‘wild’ place to stay and aren’t sure just what sort of ‘trespass’ you are committing. We have rarely been troubled but still there is a nag.

In this glade where no-one was likely to drive-by, we felt relaxed and no-one did. It’s a cork oak wood and in fact we are next to the top of an old lime kiln. These have got to be the most common industrial ‘relic’ that we have seen on our travels. The impact of lime, manufactured through the slow heating of limestone, must have been huge. After all, not only is it a building material, it can also be used to balance soil PH and as a media for the decomposition of erm, human remains. Well that’s what I gathered from a faded Spanish info board.

We walked further along the track, aiming for the village above and soon discovered that we had found the only reasonable turning-around point. Most of the track was steep uphill gravel and it was twisty and a little washed out. It had been an obvious but good place to stay.

The village was the usual maze of narrow ways that are impossible to navigate without getting a little lost. We managed to find the two or three bars, closed at Monday coffee time but eventually found the shop, disguised behind a hanging rope curtain across the door. It might as well have been the front door to a house.

We rescued ourselves from the heat of the uphill exertions with a couple of cans of lemon Fanta. Wow, how that sugar fest has been forgotten - not at all the delight that it used to be in days of olde.

The village has tremendous views across the thickly wooded valley and you can see various houses dotted around the slopes, all isolated yet not far by vehicle on the gravel, to the two villages on each side of the valley, Benarrabá and Genalguacil. There only appeared to be one dwelling linked to ‘our’ track but as with most gates and whitewashed buildings in Spain, it was very hard to determine if  anyone actually lives there.

The hills opposite rise to 1200 -1400m. One of these big lumps is igneous with iron ore type minerals in it, hence the barren upper slopes and the other is limestone. The valley is that of El Genal which flows through oak and pine woodland as well as the cork oak where we are. That bark has been stripped (harvested) at some point.

We had a little trip down to the river to test it out again and a walk upstream where there was a lot of river-in-flood evidence. There’s lots of stories about how much rain they have had in Spain over the winter and spring but as we have seen from our travels, it isn’t enough to fill the reservoirs.  

  

On the second morning in our glade, the local ‘hillside strimmers’ came along the track and for a moment we were expecting to be asked to leave. Instead, they waved and parked away from us, even though we were presumably in their usual spot. ! I like the look of their roof boxes which house their strimmers.

This 42 hours had been really nice. Our ‘preparation’ for such an event is to always:

• have an empty toilet with reasonably full flush tank
• the fridge and pantry must not be empty
• all water containers must be full. So that’s 2x10 litres plus 2 x1 litres and water bottles. 10 litres is almost enough but 20 is far easier for personal and pot washing 

The move from ‘the glade’ was south to the coast. It’s not far but it’s a major change in environment. We were heading to the southernmost tip of Spain which is also billed as the southernmost tip of ‘western Europe’. Before we got to the coast there was a treat, as the Rock of Gibraltar was clearly visible from some way inland and we were not expecting that!

At the coast the buildings looked a little different with darker paints emphasising the proximity to Africa.

We were at Tarifa and it felt ‘south’. The wind was very strong and this was to continue throughout the stay. At the supermarket I pushed the trolley smartly across the car park to empty it into the Landy but as I crossed some hidden wires the front wheel ceased to rotate. Some sort of interlock was triggered, even though there was a deposit Euro in the coin chain thing. The only way to move it was to drag it over! Living a sheltered life as I do, this is a first for me.