Hermita Pinos del Valle

Dear All

What a delightful little walk, most of us had this last Sunday. The walk was to the Hermita, above Pinos del Valle and is a must for any true Limper because of the outstanding views of our Valley that the little hill affords. So on a very bright and sunny, slightly breezy morning our group of 17 set off on our little excursion. The normal route sets off from Pinos and zig zags straight up to the Hermita, but our route was the longer but far more interesting one that leaves Pinos on the Guajar Faraguit road for about 1km before turning right, up what was once a pleasant gravel road out into the campos, but somebody is doing their best to try and spoil it, by laying concrete and making it another soulless road. You sometimes wonder if the guy who invented cement realised how much destruction and devastation his product would cause to such a beautiful landscape. After about 2 km you come to the real objective of coming this way, a wonderful little path that leads off to the right, and we are not the only ones to recognise its charm, because someone has way marked the track with the red and white stripes of a international GR route. This may be taking it a little too far, but it is a nice track. You follow the path for about 2km steadily gaining height before it emerges onto the main track coming up from Pinos. It was only at this point that you realised the steady breeze at the bottom of the hill was a full blown gale force wind at the top. Someone had to hang on to little Margaret to stop her being carried away, luckily in the shelter of the Hermita you were able to sit and enjoy the extensive vistas that had opened up around us. On our way down we had another first for the group when Joanna sliped on some loose stones and fell and twisted her ankle. After some discussion on whether to leave her to the wolves or air ambulance, it was decided she could hobble down to a place where we could extract her by car. She became the first Limper to go on a walk, and not be able to attend the tapa afterwards. Bob and Githa turned up for tapa and introduced the third member of their team, master Daniel to the group, fortunately he slept throughout the whole proceeding, and so he never realised what exalted company he was mixing with.

The walk this coming Sunday is a little longer and harder than what we have run for the last few weeks and takes us from Lanjaron to Mondujar. The path starts by following the GR7 out of Lanjaron and climbs steadily for about 1 hour with 300 meters of ascent on a good forest road. At this point we leave the GR7 and head off across country on a variety of tracks and paths with one fairly steep but not difficult decent and a gentle up hill. The walk is about 12 klm and is timed at 4.5 hours but as always this is subject to variation due to distraction and the groups ability. We have an Easter Sunday walk planned to the Buddhist centre at Os O Ling and Sundays walk will make an excellent training exercise. Tapa will be held at Josettes house in Chite afterwards.

If you are going on the walk please meet at the Acropolis bar Mondujar 9am. We then have to transfer to Lanjaron for the start of the walk, leaving behind enough cars so the drivers can later return to Lanjaron to retrieve them, I know we don't try and arrange anything like this without our Logistics manager Liz being present, but sometimes we just have to struggle on.

A bit of good news "little John" group secretary will be returning from his 2 year sabbatical in the UK on the 26th March.