El Camino del Rey

It's been a little while since I last posted - I've been meaning to write an update of what we've been up to, but it mainly ended up being "we climbed some stuff", which didn't seem very interesting.  We're now comfortably settled in El Chorro with some new friends - Andy managed to override my hermit-like instincts and made contact with several other Brits in vans sharing the same parking area.  We've been out climbing most days, and Andy has been ticking off hard routes like a machine!  I've been having less tangible success - I've been very nervous climbing on lead (starting a route with the rope at the bottom and clipping it into bolts on the way up) so have spent a lot of time top-roping (making Andy climb all of my routes first and fix the rope at the top for me) and trying to regain some confidence in my abilities. But all that's probably a post for another time...

Today we had a rest day from climbing and decided to do something a bit different. 

The most striking geographical feature of El Chorro (and the reason most people come here) is the spectacular Los Gaitanes gorge, and the Camino del Rey (the king's way).  The gorge is a narrow, forbidding defile between two 200m high limestone cliffs - despite this, the Malaga to Seville train line runs through it via a series of tunnels that were blasted through the walls of the east side of the gorge at the start of the 20th century.  In 1905 a walkway was constructed halfway up the wall on the opposite side of the gorge to allow inspection of the workings.  It was named 'the king's way' after a visit by King Alfonso XIII in 1921. Over a hundred years later, the walkway is still (mostly) there, and has been equipped with safety wires so that it can be traversed as a via ferrata.  This is a way to reach all the climbing in the gorge that we've never visited before, but doing the whole thing makes a fun day out in itself.

The first few metres of the walkway have been dismantled to stop people from climbing onto it from the railway bridge.  You now have to climb across and up to it via a series of iron rungs with a safety line clipped onto some fixed wires.  This is the only section of "proper" via ferrata on the route - the rest is just walking but on a a path that might fall down!

The start of the walkway

Via Ferrara start - some of the rungs were a bit of a stretch

The walkway looks a bit rickety from underneath as we get up to it - it seems very impressive that it's lasted this long.

Once reached, the walkway curves round into the gorge and crosses a bridge to reach the west wall.  I had heard other climbers refer to this as the Pipe Bridge.  It turns out this is because it is mostly one massive pipe, carrying water for the hydroelectricity plant below, that you walk over the top of.

The aptly-named Pipe Bridge

The walkway is now in a state of disrepair, and there are a few small gaps.

And big gaps.

Because of this, the walkway is now equipped with safety wires along its whole length.  I got a little worried when I saw this though...

I'm fairly sure that's gaffer tape...

From the western wall we had some impressive views of the railway line at the points where it briefly emerges from the tunnels.

To Seville (left) and Malaga (right)

Further along, the gorge opens out into a pretty valley.  The walkway ends and just becomes a path.  We walked a little way and had lunch in a quiet spot in the sun.  You can see the more remote sectors of climbing from here so we spent some time route spotting with the guidebook.  There is another section of walkway further up the valley in a second canyon, but we didn't do this bit - apparently this section is in a much a worse state of repair than the first and a rope (which we hadn't brought) is needed for some of it.

After a long lunch/sunbathing session we headed back.  I was feeling a lot braver on the return journey.

When we got back it was still light, so Andy decided it was time for a haircut...

Once he was suitably groomed, we headed out to a bar on the way back to Alora for beer, wifi, and blog writing...

Birthday!!

It was my birthday yesterday! I'm now old (but still not as old as Andy so it's fine...)

We've had a few days of bad weather, so my planned rest day on Thursday has turned into four.  Yesterday we pottered round Loja, a small town about 30-40 km west of Granada.

The map we picked up from the tourist info promised many interesting sights (24 of them to be precise). Unfortunately, all the indoor ones seemed to be closed - I guess mid-january is not prime tourist season here. We saw the Fuente de los 25 Caños (fountain of 25 spouts) though, which did exactly what it said on the tin.

There are 25 spouts - I counted!

Despite most of the official things being closed, we spent an enjoyable couple of hours exploring Loja.  It is quite a pleasant town with lots of tiny streets, and I took some pictures of pretty things we found hidden around corners.

Pretty floor

Statue of a sad lady next to the church

The general's palace (early 20th century). Also the town hall

We then stopped for lunch at a cafe-bar on one of the main streets.  The restaurant played an eclectic music selection, consisting of croony love songs interspersed with the Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, etc.

Olives and smoked salmon make a happy Ali

After a long, lazy lunch we headed out of town and relaxed in the van for a while.  The bad weather rolled in again and the wind picked up, causing the van to rock occasionally in a slightly disconcerting way. Andy took my mind off it by preparing a light dinner of my favourite things - cured meat, cured fish and cheese, with a glass of Old Peculier on the side. Combined with the smoked salmon and olives I had for lunch, this means I managed to eat pretty much all my favourite things in one day.

Board of happiness!

In place of a birthday cake we tried some Roscos, ring-shaped cakes that are apparently a local delicacy. I found them a little very for my taste, but they were liberally coated in sugar and cinnamon, which is all good...

Roscos!!

This morning the weather turned properly horrible near Loja - high winds, rain lashing down and temperatures of 3 degrees!  The joy of living in a van though is that, after a quick check of the weather forecast for the surrounding area, we packed up our breakfast things and rolled further west and south to Valle de Abdajais, where it's several degrees warmer. The pedantic amongst you might point out that if we lived in proper house we wouldn't need to move it because we could just turn up the heating, but that would be missing the point...!

Tired...

I feel like this:

I sort of knew I was unfit - apart from frantic bursts of activity in the lab I spent most of my waking hours last year either sitting down at a computer or slumped on the sofa. Still, it's taken me a little by surprise just how tired I feel less than two weeks into the trip. I'm aching in places I didn't even know I had places! In terms of actual number of routes climbed, I've hardly done anything - I've probably only been averaging one route a day so far.  But after such a long period of inactivity that, plus getting up almost every day and carrying a bag up a hill, is apparently enough to wipe me out.  It's going to make me stronger in the end though, right?

Andy's been coping better than me in general - until yesterday.  He had a fantastically successful day the day before at Gandia in the Costa Blance (a 7a and 7a+ onsight, and another 7a+ second go), but yesterday had to rest on the rope on a 6b+ (four grades easier) because his fingers hurt too much to pull on the holds!  We spent most of the rest of the afternoon sitting in the sun chatting to an Australian couple who'd quit their jobs to travel round Europe for two years, putting our 9 month trip to shame!

We therefore decided it was probably a good idea to have a proper rest day today.  We did another few hours of southward driving yesterday evening, had a lazy morning (including a much needed shower!) this morning, then this afternoon we're off to have a look round Granada. I'll hopefully post something about that I the next few days.

In the meantime though, here is a collection of random things I have noticed recently:

- in Spanish supermarkets it doesn't seem to be possible to buy garlic in smaller denominations than a bag of five bulbs.  The concept of only wanting to buy a single bulb of garlic doesn't seem to exist.

- I have discovered a new foodstuff! On our last shopping trip I bought a block of smoked and cured tuna. It's nice - it tastes a bit like biltong but fishier!  I'm not sure if this is a uniquely Spanish thing or a general continental thing (we were in a massive Carrefour at the time), but it's not something I've ever seen before.

- in small Spanish villages, cafés don't seem to have much interest in advertising themselves as such - I assume the logic is that all the locals know where it is already so why would they need a sign?  In Chulilla (a picturesque little village at the head of a gorge full of great climbing) we had to ask in the butcher's shop (where we were buying bread), whether there was a cafe nearby and it turned out we'd been standing right next to one - but it just looked like someone's house!  I should have taken a picture really, but didn't think about it at the time...

- somebody in Gandia really doesn't like golf!!  On reflection, this is probably a comment on the despoiling of the countryside around the Costa Blanca by developers building golf resorts (we weren't too far away from Benidorm and Alicante), but the idea of someone getting that riled up about golf as a sport amused me for a few minutes.

- Spanish parking can be...interesting.  Here, I like how the guy on the left has ignored about 20 available parking spaces (there are about five just about visible in the picture, plus loads of others out of shot), and has just stopped in the middle of the road with hazards on.

- I saw this French sign in a service station south of Murcia, so quite a long way from France. I can only assume therefore that this service station must have a specific problem with French people trying to wash their feet in the sink...

Anyway, I'm off to be touristical for an afternoon. ¡Hasta luego!

Celebrating a week...

It's been a week now and we're starting to settle down into van life. We now have most things we need day-to-day stored in accessible places, and the eight steps required to set up the bed in the evenings have become second nature.

Most importantly, we have found some sun! After driving through a storm from Millau on Saturday, we emerged the Spanish side of the border on Sunday to glorious sunshine which has lasted ever since.

Our first stop in Spain was Monserrat, which Andy has already written about here.  A lot of the climbing here was on very strange, conglomerate rock, which Andy described (fairly accurately) as 'like climbing up the pebble-dashed wall of a house - but weirder'.

Montserrat rock, with rope for scale

We did find a section where the climbing was a bit more conventional though, and i managed my first proper climb of the trip, a flash of a 6a that didn't get a name in the guidebook we have, but was the first pitch of Top Manta (7c+). I was very pleased with this (as you might be able to tell from the picture below). My first mini-goal within my larger 'get better at climbing' goal was to lead a 6a, so to achieve this so early on was quite encouraging!

We next moved on to Siurana, and treated ourselves to a couple of nights of showers, laundry, pizza and beer in Toni's campsite and bar.  We spent a day at sector Grau dels Masets and had the whole place to ourselves for most of the day apart from a friendly robin.

New friend!

The plan was for me to spend the morning pottering up easy stuff (Fr 4's and 5's) to get some mileage.  This worked well until i got sucked into trying a 6a that lulled me into a false sense of achievement low down, but then got hard and did this to my hands:

Yesterday we walked up to Montsant, a continuous band of conglomerate rock stretching all the way across the edge of the Sierra de Montsant above the village of Cornudella de Montsant (it's quite an important geographical feature). The most famous and impressive sector, Racó de Missa, is reached by a half-hour trudge up a hill from the parking area, which I then had to trudge back down and up again when we realised we had left the van curtains open and forgotten the suncream. The view from the top was worth it though - we were looking down from above the clouds hanging over the valley.

Andy climbed with Tomar, a friend from Bristol we had met in the bar at Siurana the previous evening, while I had a bit of a rest and enjoyed the sunshine and watched other people.

Racó de Missa. For scale, there is a teeny tiny climber low down on the left wall. 

The view out towards the sea

Apparently, the climbing at Montsant can be best described as 'unrelenting'. No individual moves are particularly hard, but there are a lot of them. Andy put in a fantastic effort to get his first Fr7a onsight of the trip, and came down looking like Popeye.

Because Andy felt like he deserved it after his efforts, and to celebrate a successful first week in the van, we rounded off the evening with pizza and beer in a bar in Cornudella. This morning has been a slow start - I've been writing this, drinking large amounts of coffee and eating caño - a pastry like a sausage roll but filled with chocolate cream instead! Off to Villenova de Prades for more easy mileage in a few minutes though, then the plan is to keep heading south...

Escape to the sun (nearly)...

Quick breakfast stop

So after about a month of frantic packing and work-finishing, followed by two lovely family Christmases, we've finally left the country. Last week was spent putting the final finishing touches to the van, including sewing cut up sleeping bags together to make a more packable duvet, and making some fancy tie-backs to keep our curtains under control.  We managed to squeeze in some time to drop in on some friends too.



On the evening of New Years Day we slept in the van in the driving wind and rain outside Andy's parents' flat. The van stayed very cosy though, giving me confidence that our insulation will be able to cope with whatever winter nights in Spain can throw at us.

Cosy...

We started the drive down to Folkestone at 5 am - Andy very kindly took on this leg of driving so all I had to do was drag myself the two metres from bed to the passenger seat before falling asleep again. After an uneventful Eurotunnel crossing, and fuelled by double espresso, I drove from Calais to Orléans in one push. Northern France was bathed in glorious sunshine, which was a lovely change from the weather in the UK the past few weeks. This is me (and Aleksandr) basking in the warmth:

We stopped for the night above the Gorge du Tarn, near a village called Le Massegros. We'd hoped to get a little climbing in this morning, but unfortunately the weather closed in overnight and we woke up to this:

Gorge de la Jonte in the mist

Gorge du Tarn in the mist

Apparently, the south of France isn't south enough to find the sun at this time of year, so we'll keep going. To Spain!