October 5 2014 Rock climbing in Albunúelas

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Hi
Do you remember when you were a kid? You could climb trees, swim in rivers, climb rocks, nothing scared you, you were invincible. Well, this week we were all aged 10 again, and we went scrambling.
We met in Albunúelas and then drove about 4 km up the Rio Santo valley and parked the cars in the dry river bed. The weather forecast was for rain after 5pm, I hoped they were right with their timings and that we would not find the cars washed away down the river. There was a big storm in Granada on Thursday and cars were floating in the streets.  
The walk started by following the forest road, high above the barranco. After a couple of kms another barranco crosses the road and this was were the fun began.
Mike had decided to miss out on all the adventures in the barranco, he is finally getting wise to some of my walks. Instead he took a small band of the less intrepid on an alternative route and met us at the top of the waterfall. Our route took us up an incredible valley. I have never seen any sign of human activity, no footprints, nothing. It’s just as if we are the only ones to have discovered it.
You don’t have to walk far before you are scrambling over boulders, there was no stopping the group. Every rock was a challenge, every one was conquered and they were off looking for the next one. Eventually we came to a 4 metre high rock which, after a storm, will make a wonderful waterfall. I had brought a rope along to help anyone who was a bit unsure of their rock climbing abilities. Was it needed? No, they were youngsters again and they could climb like Spiderman.
At the top we met up with Mike and his troupe and then set off on the return path along the GR7.
Half way back we dropped down into the dried up river bed to take a look at the old Lavender distillery. At one time this must have been quite a thriving industry in the valley. We continued to follow the barranco back to the cars. I was surprised to look back and see black clouds rolling in behind us, 4 hours ahead of schedule, we hightailed it out of the valley pretty sharply. Regaining our adulthood we then headed into Albunúelas for a beer, which we could not have done if we were proper kids.
In the afternoon we went around to Dave and Julie’s for tapas and whilst it looked like we would get an afternoon thunderstorm it never materialized.

This week we had 22 in the group
We walked 9.6 km and climbed 269 metres.


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