Skip to main content

Camping at the lake

A notice board at a beauty spot we visited had asked walkers not to feed the wildlife ‘as it may change their diet’. This doesn’t appear to have been a detriment to Herring gulls in the UK, as they seem to thrive on meals of fish & chips and ice cream. In fact I read today that they are a protected species and the nest a pair have made on top of a police car in Bridport cannot be disturbed until the young have fledged!

At this beautiful lake where we camped overnight at another suggested ‘wild place’, a fisherman arrived at about the same time as the sun was warming our canvas, urging us to get up.



He was ready to chat as soon as I emerged with my morning cuppa but was a little less engaging once I’d told him I was Inglese. Of course that was more a language issue than anything else and I reassured him that I could converse in Spanish, This isn’t exactly true but a Carp in England is a Carp in Spain so we were off to a good start.

Fortunately for this friendly guy there were no notices about changing the diet of the Carp in this lake. It was just as well, as his first activity was to launch about 500Kg of ground bait that could easily be from yesterday’s menu del dia, using this fishing line bomb. It explodes on impact and dumps the contents in the water. This attracts the fish to his casting area and they later jump onto his hook.



He seemed to know what he’s doing but the Carp were having none of it! There’s a lot of standing and even more sitting in this form of the sport, as once the fishing lines are ‘out’, dangling the hook below the float, the fisherman does nothing except check the rod for movement.

This lake and several others are known as Mar de Castilla it’s a huge expanse of beautiful blue water, east of Madrid, with forest and rocky outcrop slopes. We had a perfect night and a great most of the next day pitched just above the waterline.







The shoreline is very accessible and maybe it gets busy sometimes. We could honestly have stayed there for a week. The water was a lovely temperature and the sun strong and warm.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The empty map of Macedonia and into Greece

Continuing south towards the Serbia / Macedonia border, the satnav warned of a lack of detail, "do you wish to continue with this route?" However we are not intrepid explorers and Macedonia comes with a few " be careful" warnings, so we decided to stay on the motorway :-) We didn't explore Serbia; it will wait for another trip. So it was on to the border. Here, passport and V5 were required again and also proof of insurance. We didn't have any of course. When we rang the UK insurance company call centres prior to the trip, most had no idea where these countries are. They don't understand non-EU. "Macedonia - can you spell that"? The nice man at the passport office was already expecting me to say that I would buy my insurance at the "Green card office" and he handed back one passport and the V5 and put mine in his pocket until I had the necessary paper for the Landy. Unfortunately in spite of the Land Rover being classed as PL...
9 comments
Read more

Remote mountains and how not to behave in them

Prior to the trip I had read somewhere that there aren’t any mountains in Portugal - at least I thought I read it. My preparations had, as usual, been focused almost totally on getting the Landy ready and Dawn, who had been doing all the other jobs was much better informed. “What? You are kidding aren’t you? Have you even looked at a map?” were some of the words she used when I told her this vital piece of information. As it became clear, there are mountains in Portugal - not massive peaks but high elevations are common and the extent of the ranges is quite large. The most remote and wild are the Serra da Peneda Gerês which rise to 1,440m but there are three others “Seras” in the Parque National da Peneda - Gerês, in which wolves roam free. First stop on they way there was the town of Guimarães, the day after “Portugal Day” and the castle and buildings were in tip-top condition. A Polish guy from Katowice who’s lived here for twenty years was selling bilberry jam in these c...
8 comments
Read more

"I'm the dog"

El Berro and  Camping Sierra Espuña  are nicely positioned for walking in these 'low' Sierras and of course the obligatory GR XYZ  long distance path crosses the village. The campsite people gave us a couple of short walk suggestions, written on A4 and translated by some English guy, Michael Ball. We waited until the end of the afternoon, so that the temperature was somewhat manageable and then picked one of the ~1 hour walks that start at the campsite. The walk is so simple that there's no description, just a small diagram that's well annotated with the type of path (wide main track / footpath), other markers (gate, incorrect route, fence). You can't go wrong, can you? Well the first part was easy. Follow the path out of the village, up a valley, through woodland, up and up. Then reach the ridge and the marked ring of stones. Don't turn right, carry on straight across. Then wander through a few trees and down to a dry riverbed, at which point you walk the (ve...
6 comments
Read more