The Caminito del Rey ‘gorge walk’

The Caminito del Rey is a famous gorge walk which translates to either the King’s small walk or the small King’s walk. Hmmm not sure.

We are north of Malaga and Marbella in an area of huge limestone outcrops in the huge limestone mountains. There’s a particular area of Interest which is a massive defile in the limestone where several dams were constructed early in the 20C and access along the gorge sides was rather crazily made with a death defying ‘path’ made by attaching a rail to the rock face, to put it too simply. 

Here is a photo to help explain.

The lower walkway is the original but after five deaths in recent years, the walk was closed and the new one constructed.

The old guidebook we are using say it’s closed but it isn’t. The only problem was that the very informative website showed that all non-guided tickets were sold out in advance for several days. Luckily an eagle-eyed clever person surmised that some tickets might be released the day before and they were! Happiness. We booked. Ugh what a palaver. Register first. Then buy the ticket using a card. Then personalise them with name, email, phone number and ID or passport number. If you refuse the passport number field (who would try that) then it won’t ‘personalise’.

Tickets for the first group of self-guided walkers were bought for 08:50 the next morning.

All we had to do was find a place to sleep not far away and do a reconnaissance as it’s a one way walk and we wouldn’t want to be surprised with an ‘extra hike’ to the shuttle bus.

The result was that we drove to the top of a hill, next to the top reservoir of a pumped storage HEP system above the settlement of El Chorro, at the end of the gorge walk. It was bliss and we watched the sun set and rise.

The walk starts with a 2km walk into the gorge and the first part of that is a short tunnel.

Then we’re issued with helmets and set off.

The walk in is nice but then the fun starts. Here are the pics which say it all really.

Nothing can quite convey the grandeur of this place or the exposure which isn’t quite as sweaty palms as you might think.

It was a great walk. The dramatic part was about a 90 minute thrill with 30mins at each end.

Here are a couple of video links. I hope they work!