24 November 2013 Sierra Lújar

It’s been a cold week in the valley, with a bitter northerly wind blowing most of the time, why they can’t turn those dam windmills around and suck warm air up from the coast is beyond me.  The idea of heading off downhill for our big walk, and walking on the sunny side of Sierra Lújar, seemed like a good idea.

The starting point for our walk was Lagos, a small pueblo nestling on the side of the Sierra Lújar, its main claim to fame is the bar, whose owner definitely never went to the charm the punter school.

By the time we arrived the windmills above the village were turned off and there was no wind. The last time we were here they were going around like the propellers on a spitfire and you could hardly stand up.   

The walk starts by heading uphill on a little path that winds its way up to the windmills, everyone was hoping they would not turn them on and blow us away again. From here we headed off to the pueblo of Lújar. There is a bar here whose owner can’t do enough for you, with umpteen tapas for every drink, some in the group were hoping we could find time to stop but I was worried that once they were in they would not come out until they were legless, and there would not be enough time to complete the walk.

Continuing on the path we walked through a cork oak forest (Alcornoque). The shape of the trees is amazing, you can imagine them all walking about on a dark misty night, waving their arms about. We stopped for lunch at the midway point, sorry I was unable to confirm this at the time, but I can now tell you we had covered 8.69 km.

The path back is moderately flat and we were able to increase the speed to 5 kph. The only sting in the tail is the steep climb up into the village, it’s only 137 metres but, at times, the slope is 42%, so it comes hard after a longish walk.

Back in the village we discovered, to our delight, that the bar was open, it was full of hunters drinking beer out of the bottle, this was obviously the drink of choice at this bar, anything else was unthinkable. The bar man served our order for 9 beers and disappeared, obviously he did not consider the other 6 in the group would be thirsty and wanting something besides beer. We kept having to drag him back before everyone managed to get a drink.

An enjoyable day, out of the wind and moderately warm.    

  

We walked 16.8 km and climbed 811 meters.

Hilary’s report for the B teams Sunday walk.

 Sunday was a clear-blue-sky day and our walk took us through Murchas and down the rio Torrente valley to Melegis church. It has the most extravagant gold baroque altar wall.  Saying farewell to the trumpeting cherubs we took one of the narrow lanes to Beznar Lake where our second stop  was at the summer swimming pool.  It was looking much tidier and cared for than in the past.  We then followed the lake for 2 or 3 km on a track which has been much improved in places and eventually reached the barranco de Chite.  By this time it was T-shirt weather and  the lake looked calm and blue and sparkly.  All so peaceful until we hear the roar, bit of an exaggeration perhaps, of Rio Chite. There was a plan B to hike back up to the road but all agreed to jump the river with the help of a discarded pallet.  Ten times we crossed that river as we splashed up the steamy gorge, the light filtering through the giant trees.  This is getting a bit OTT so lets just say that we were pretty puffed out after the climb out of the barranco into lower Chite where it was only another kilometer to complete our 11 km "senderismo". I cheated and hopped on the back of Grahame's scooter and my "mapmywalk" app didn't work so 11km is just an estimate. The pork at Noche Azul was every bit as good as Arthur had promised.