In my eyes, no weekend is complete without a Sunday walk. I love nothing more than donning my wellies/Lowas/walky boots/flip flops and heading out the door for a stroll and to top up my lungs with clean, fresh air.
This weekend was no exception, so armed with sandwiches, water and a good dose of sense of humour we four intrepid explorers left the deserted Castellon city centre and aimed for the hills. (Aimed is the most appropriate word here, as we followed our nose, no maps in sight!)
Our journey to the foot of the hills was adventurous enough, including: one dead dog, a forbidden tunnel, the incident of the leggings and the butt cheek, orange groves, super keen cycling dads, a Spanish mafia drug den, a dead sheep, police line do not cross, deserted buildings, a road toll, crossing the motorway....
From the base, the hill had no discernible paths, so we took the simple option of going straight up. This provided a fair amount of scrambling and taking chances on not so stationary chunks of rock....
We were fooled many a time by the cheeky 'false summits', aiming for that clump of trees, then that shack, then that reddish big rock, then that big bush until we saw what looked like a house at the top. We were pretty cautious/nervous as the Spanish don't take kindly at all to you being on their private property so we snuck up to it....to find out it was still under construction.
Only to discover that it was yet another false summit!! Luckily, it was only another 100m or so to the actual peak! We reckon it was about 700m up which in an hour isn't a bad effort at all, considering we had to scramble most of it!
It was lovely to put our feet up and enjoy this stunning view for lunch! It's pretty much always clear days out here, but even so, being able to see so far in all directions was so refreshing and utterly calming for the soul.
The route down was even more eventful than our ascent! We encountered a cliff face of climbers, a street lined with yappy dogs in each house, more police tape, random holiday apartments, kamikaze motorists, no people, a dead bird, a whole bumper..... You'd think by following the path home it would have been simple, but it was much more of a challenge as the tracks rarely led in the required direction!! It was great thanks to Shona's trekking instinct that we all got home in one piece, a good 6/7 hours later! (I think it's her Scottish genes!)
We returned home to more movies and cinnamon sugar popcorn (try it yourself, truly addictive!!!) feeling much more energised for the week ahead! Next time, the big red hill!
Well, it looks like you all had an adventurous and energetic weekend... good for you. We went for a nice little walk ourselves on Saturday, around Peper Harow, with my sister Alison and her hubby Peter and Stewart and Phie. Not anything like your hike and in very different, freezing cold, weather but there were a couple of pints in the pub at the end of it so.. very enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteLoving the commentary and pictures as usual...particularly like the windy shots. I can't help but notice that Shona has one leg of her leggings shorter that the other, haha...running repairs?
Daddy P.xxx
That's exactly what I said was missing from our day - the end point being a pub lunch with a warm fire and a ROAST for dinner. I can't wait to come home and have one with all the trimmings, I think I'm going to make it a compulsory weekly thing in our house next year!!
ReplyDeleteAw that sounds like such a lovely family day out, and well done all of you for braving the weather!!! Who knows, maybe next weekend you'll have more snow in the UK?!!
Haha yes I'm sure Sho can tell you the amusing story about her little incident....x x x