Tag Archives: El Sabinar

Heading on into the autonomous community of Múrcia

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.

Community limit
Community limit

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.

Múrcia
Múrcia

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.

Rabo de toro

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.

Forest trail
Forest trail

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!

Dirty boots
Dirty boots

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.

Calasparra
Calasparra

In the evening I had a fantastically tasty rabo de toro, bulls tail, that melted in the mouth.