The one interesting thing to see walking in this area was the many cave houses that made the mountain sides look like Swiss cheese in some places.
I think that most of the caves were used to store equipment and to give shelter to animals but in other parts of Andalucía there are regular houses contained inside caves.
I stayed at another guest house in Huéscar. It had a super market but no restaurant so I had to go downtown for a bit to find supper.
May 30 began with several miles on a tarmac road lined with high cypress trees. After a while I almost had the same desperate feeling as when walking in the “Valley of death” a couple of days before. It soon becomes too boring for the brain when a pattern repeats itself for miles and you really can’t see anything else.
Later on there were some interesting cliff formations to look at like el Salto del moro, the Moors leap, but otherwise not much to see except pine forest. I entered Puebla de Don Fadrique after six hours and 25 kilometers which was far less than I was accustomed to.
I had a tapa in the first bar I ran into and asked the bar woman if there was a hotel in the village. There was a motel at the northern outskirts of Puebla de Don Fadrique and they had both room and board for me.
This was the last stage of my guide-book and from the day after I had to rely completely on my GPS-device but I also was going to buy a map when I found a good one in order to get the big picture of the country that I was passing through.
A rather straight forward march up unto the high plateau covering as good as all of central Spain. The afternoon involved quite a bit of hard work as I didn’t have my GPS-device set up at a good enough resolution and that resulted in some sliding about on slippery hillsides until finding my way back to the track again.
A thunderstorm passed by with a couple of heavy showers that completely got me completely soaked. But I reached El Sabinar a village with 300 souls, two restaurants, and a guest house with a bar. It was raw and chilly and I was a bit concerned that my boots probably shouldn’t dry much over night.I went down the stairs to the guest house bar at around seven o’clock and asked if I could have dinner.
The answer was affirmative but I had to ask to times more before the barman understood that I wanted to eat at once at a, for him, extremely early time for dinner. But as soon as he had understood he swiftly presented a very nice casserole that he held warm on the stove with some bread, a salad, and a glass of Rioja.
I made an early start as usual but the bar was open and I had toast and coffee before I left. This day involved another fifty kilometers in rainy weather but the rain really isn’t any trouble, but the clay is. The surface on the forest roads is made up of very fine-grained sand and when it rains it immediately sticks to your boots rapidly building layers of mud that soon is several centimeters thick and impossible to walk on.
You are forced to stop every fifty meters or so and try to scrape the mud off the soles of your boots, and that is just as easy as removing dog-shit from there, very annoying I can tell you!
I reached Calasparra in a beautiful evening sun and rented an apartment for the night that to my joy was fully equipped with washing machine and all. I really needed to wash my clothes.
In the evening I had a fantastically tasty rabo de toro, bulls tail, that melted in the mouth.
This was another of those rather monotonous days following stone starred dirt roads lined by almond trees that stood in straight lines as far as you could see in all directions. Part of the stage though was walked through areas with low-growing pine forests and eroded cliffs.
The terrain is much undulated with lots of ravines to round. The problem is that you seldom pass any villages where you can have something nice to eat and drink.
A day spent mostly walking in a valley with fields growing peaches, vines, almonds, and olives.
Shortly before reaching my destination I passed over the border to Valencia and I really wasn’t a bit sorry for leaving Múrcia.
I walked on with good speed passing through Elda ending up in Castalla for the night. The mountain between Elda and Castalla gave me a hard time walking on slowly climbing forest tracks hour after hour.
For the first time I encountered a hotel that was full and I had to continue to a motel a few kilometers further ahead.
A nice walking day with real hiking tracks that takes you fast up and down steep slopes compared to moving slowly on serpentine forest tracks.
I walked into Alcoy in the late afternoon and had plenty of time to make preparations for the next day.
In the evening I went looking for a sports shop and found one in the center of the city after a minor investigation where I bought a new 70 liter backpack.
My old backpack had broken down completely and was not possible to carry anymore. It was a challenge to fit everything from the old 100 liter backpack into the new and I had to make a few sacrifices. But I was very pleased with the result in the end.
I hadn’t seen this coming but it turned out to be the toughest day since the Alpujarras, a thirty kilometer stage that took me all day to complete! Good hiking tracks though through beautiful nature.
Some time in the middle of the day when I looked back I saw a young fox trotting happily just a few meters behind me in the track. It continued to keep me company until I reached a farm and when dogs began barking the fox was suddenly gone.
Relatively expensive accommodation in Bocairent but there were no alternatives.
This was to become the hardest day of them all so far. It was very hot and the first part of the stage ended in some crossroads in the middle of nowhere and there was no chance after that (I later learned) to get hold of water. The track then continued steeply uphill on a surface made up of big rocks for the good part of the rest of the afternoon with no shade to be found anywhere. Doing this hour after hour can make anyone utter primal cries 🙂 The slope down into the last valley was v-e-r-y steep with a lot of roots and loose, big stones to stumble on. Halfway down I went out of water, although I had gone easy on it all day long, and I was really exhausted. The GPS track information wasn’t very accurate either but luckily I was pointed in the right direction by two different gentlemen at two different occasions.
A cold beer tastes like fine champagne after such hardships and after also having had a liter of water I felt fully recovered.
I took a taxi to a casa rural at the outskirts of Mogent and was greeted by a young couple that took really good care of me and even made me dinner although it was quite late in the evening.
But what had happened that day made me think of days to come when GR-7 was to disappear into a big natural park where it continued for several days and I decided to try to find a different route instead of walking round all day being anxious for not finding water or for not having water enough.
