The weather in Spain at the moment is abysmal, it appears never to stop raining. In an effort to try and keep below the snow line, and to find some dry conditions, we had decided to head back to Almeria Province, after all they are always complaining about the shortage of water over there. The weather forecast for our walk to Piedra Negra from Loma de la Cuesta de la Alpujarra (section 14) was for heavy rain up until 10.00 am and then dry conditions to follow. Leaving home at 8 am in the rain and low cloud one has to question the sanity of the group. We must all be certifiable because nobody asked why we were doing this!
The route up was the fast way along the A92 as far as Huéneja where we had hoped to get a coffee and wait for 10am when the rain would miraculously disappear. The Pueblo is a one horse town and the horse had left many years ago, not a bar in sight. This left us with no option but to drive the 20 km up to the start of our trail, mind Kees could not complain because I had already dragged him out of a bar before we had set off from Talara.
The higher we climbed the worse the conditions became, not only was it raining but we were also enveloped in cloud and the road had the appearance of a river bed. Reality slowly dawned on us that doing a 20 km walk in these conditions was not going to be fun. A new plan was quickly put together, we would drive another 5 km along the forest track and do a shorter section up to Piedra Negra.
It was now around 10.30 and the rain had stopped, but the cloud had not disappeared, we still had no view of the surrounding mountains. The guide book mentions that the path crosses numerous mountain streams, after all the rain they had turned into raging torrents necessitating some fancy foot work to keep the feet dry.
The path was not as well marked as previous sections and there were times when, without the GPS to point us in the right direction, I think we would have turned around. Pressing on we finally arrived at our destination of Piedra Negra, a point we had visited on the 12th April. After stopping in the mist for a quick lunch we made our way back to the car and finally, the clouds rolled back, and we were rewarded with views of the wonderful countryside we had been walking in.
Last week I mentioned that I was unable to verify Grahams sighting of Pine Martens, I unreservedly offer my apologies if this innocent remark ruffled his feathers but, as we all know, all the important published papers must have verifiable facts. We can’t have people just making any old thing up, nobody would take us seriously!!!
The walkers Mike, Kees, Rene, Graham and myself.
Distance walked on route today 4.5 km. Total distance today 9.55 km. Height climbed today 462 metres. Total distance walked on the Sulayr path 61.2 km. Distance left to do 238.8 km. Total height climbed 4481 metres. Total distance walked 147.7 km.
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