Last Seasons Blog

Last Seasons Blog is still available to view via this link.
I do ask for a €2 donation from each walker, but only once per week. Half goes to S.O.S Animals, Spain and the other half going to ARCH Horse charity, AID Animal Charity and CUDECA.

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Thursday 12th January 2017 – Voltacado

Originally the Thursday walks where designed for a small group to explore new routes that could or could not be undertaken by the Saturday group. However the Thursday routes are now sometimes as popular as the main Saturday walks and this was one of those times. I have walked in this area many times before, but several years ago, with my beautiful dog Lily, now unfortunately and sadly passed on after sniffing the deadly Procession Caterpillar, but never this particular route.

The walk was something of a disaster, after we had parked up at the start of the track that leads eventually to Mijas Golf and started the walk, it immediately became clear that I would be struggling on the way back with the steepness of it. We walked down the track with stunning views to the coast, and on a clearer day Gibraltar and the Atlas Mountains are visible, and indeed the views were stunning all around.
The track descended around hairpin bends and kept descending and I then remembered that in the past I had always taken the car down to this point before letting Lily free, which is why I had never noticed how steep the track was. Eventually we found that the route I had planned and left the main track was in fact now almost disappeared and was blocked by a fence, our resident explorer, John Milborrow, investigated and found that in fact a section of the fence was able to be opened, so we passed through.
What had some time ago been the track was now mainly washed away so the going was not easy at times and quite steep. At the bottom of the valley the way had been blocked and it soon became visible as to why. The recent storms had caused some landslips and the tracks were no longer passable to vehicles, however on foot was still passable so we continued, taking a well earned break on dry ford. The GPX then indicated that we took the overgrown track up towards the water tank at which point we found locked gates across the route and that even if we managed to continue it was onto someone’s private drive.

We turned around and retraced our steps back up to the main track that we had left and took this heading back for the cars. After a while we hit the really steep parts of the way back and it was at this points I was ordered to sit and stay and someone would return to take me up to the start by car, luckily a couple of the ladies in the group were also struggling and they stayed with me.
I have to apologise for the walk turning out not exactly as planned, but as always the banter was great and of course I was the butt of most of it. We had 19 on this walk and thankfully not more!


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