Walk 13 September 2015 Venta del Fraile

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This week Dave bought himself a GPS and he wanted to test it out on a challenging walk. I wasn’t too keen for him to do an Ironman type walk where we wouldn’t see him again for weeks. Instead we settled on a very easy circular walk, something anyone could do with their eyes closed, what could go wrong! The challenge would be for them to start ½ hour behind us, catch us up and then lead us safely back to the bar.
 So much interest had been generated in Dave’s new GPS that we needed 7 cars to transport everyone to Venta del Fraile for the start of the walk. We set off on a gentle stroll, the first part of the walk was along the quarry road. As you near the quarry a path leads off the road and into the forest. This was going to be the second challenge to Dave’s navigational skills, the first had been to find the start of the walk but he had the route and the map on his GPS.
 At the quarry we admired the view, took photos, had a drink while we waited for Dave to catch us up. Eventually we gave up waiting and set off along the agreed route.   
 What I had not factored into the walk was that a mountain bike race was going to be using the same footpath as us for our return to the cars. Now, to start with we thought we would let them pass, we had watched the Vuelta in Talara a couple of weeks ago and and that had gone through in 30 seconds. After waiting around for 20 minutes and cheering every rider that passed us, we decided Dave must be lost and we would be better off making our way to the bar from where we could plan a rescue mission, time was of the essence as we did not know how long the batteries in his GPS would last.
We set off along the narrow twisting path with the Cyclists in hot pursuit. Every few seconds ”Bici” would emanate from John, who was doing a great job as our rear guard, and we would climb up the hillside or fling ourselves down the banking. After a couple of kms of trying to walk and dodge the bikes we decided to take an early lunch and let the 300+ mountain bikers get out of the way. Dave and his poor wife Julie would just have to fend for themselves, there was still a few hours of daylight left. We did consider leaving some sandwiches for them just in case they did have to spend the night out in the forest, but everyone was hungry so we ate them all.
 With only the stragglers left in the race we rejoined the path and headed off back towards the bar, any thoughts of rescuing D & J  now gone from our heads as the prospect of a big tapas party around at John and Carol’s had taken centre stage (more important).
 We had not gone far when I received a weak and garbled phone call from Dave, somehow they were in front of us, which, as 21 of us will attest to, was impossible. No one apart from the 300+ cyclists had passed us. Eventually we discovered them sat under a tree, he had some old cock and bull story about missing the diversion to the Quarry, but in all honesty who is going to believe a story like that. We continued down to the Venta del Fraile bar but they did not seem too interested in serving us so we went to the Repsol garage in Padul for a quick beer and tapas.
In the afternoon we went round to John and Carol’s for a 3 birthday celebration.  
We walked 11.1 km and climbed 281  metres.


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