2 March 2014 Rio Lanjaron

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Plan A this week, was a circular walk from Talara. By Friday it was becoming obvious it was going to be a pretty miserable walk. The forecast was predicting cool temperatures,  a strong northerly wind and some rain. Not something to eagerly get out of bed for at 7am. I had to come up with something to entice the group to turn out and not turn over and go back to sleep. Fortunately, only 10 minutes away from our valley, sits Lanajaon. Nestling in the lee of the Sierra Nevada’s it is protected from the bitter northerly winds that have become a feature of our valley recently. An extensive search of the Limper walks repository came up with a circular walk around the Rio Lanjaron. So I sent an email changing our destination and extolling the virtues of Lanjaron. I thought I may have over egged the pudding (tried to make it too good) a bit by describing it as a different world, but hey,I didn’t want the walk to consist of just Mike and myself.
Sunday morning dawned as predicted, it was cold, wet, and the clouds were hanging in the valley, and there was 14 walkers awaiting me in Beznar. Not a word was spoken but you could tell from the body language that my credibility was hanging in the balance. Would the group be looking for a new leader? Would the old one have taken an unfortunate stumble into the fast flowing Rio Lanjaron?
You know what it is like when you fly to Spain from the UK, you board the plane in a howling rain sodden gale and by the time you get off 2 ½ hours later it is hot and sunny. Well, compress that into the 10 minute drive to Lanjaron, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and there was no wind. We have become accustomed to walking at an angle of 45 degrees into the wind, here we kept falling over, we had to relearn how to walk straight.
The walk starts by following the GR7 as it climbs out of the town towards Orgiva, this is a short steep section before it heads off on a level road back towards the Rio Lanjaron. For the next hour we slowly climb up to an altitude of 1082 metres, our maximum for the day, before dropping down towards the river. We stopped for an early lunch in the sun before saying good by the Plym and Jess who were returning by a short cut. We continued down to the roaring Rio Lanjaron, I have never seen so much water in it. Fortunately the bridge was still standing and we were soon heading back to Lanjaron and a nice cool beer in the sun.
With my reputation intact we headed back to Beznar and to the wind, rain and low cloud.
A memorable walk, even if only for the weather.          
  
We walked 9.9 km and climbed 490 metres.
Later we went round to Conchi’s cortijo for tapas and had an enjoyable afternoon.

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