Walk Sunday 25th October 2015 The Ermita Pinos del Valle

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This week we went to the Ermita in Pinos del Valle.
The start of the walk was on a new track to me, it was discovered by Jan earlier this year. Just to make sure he got all the plaudits for discovering the new track I made sure everyone knew about his discovery before the start of the walk. This also absolved me of any comeback if things went wrong.
 The walk started from the carpark by the side of the Beznar dam and followed the road across the dam wall. It’s like looking into the bowels of the earth when you look over the side.  At the far side we took a campo road that headed up the hillside. The path was a delight as it made its way in and out of the orange and olive groves, along acequia and finally meeting a concrete road, which we followed up hill until we met the Guájar Faragúit road.
Rene and Hilary decided this was a good place to say goodbye to us and make their own way back, I suspect they were heading for the bar Venecia in Pinos. It was not an ideal place to take a group photo so I just took a picture of them both with the idea of photoshopping them into the group later in a more photogenic setting .
The rest of us continued our climb up to the Ermita, stopping for an energy recharge at the big water tank.
 After the tank it is just a matter of heading uphill, congratulations to everyone, we did the zig zags in 24 minutes without stopping.
 At the top we stopped for a well earned lunch break and our group photo. Knowing that I had Rene, Hilary and myself to add I left sufficient space in the photo for us, only to discover Frank and Jelle hiding, out of the wind, behind the Ermita, when we were on our way down. Again they would have to be photoshopped in. It is a good job there were no serious photographers in the group this week, I would have been burned at the stake for fakery.
 With rain threatening we set off on our return path down to Pinos. All day we had walked as a pretty tight bunch but, at the Lavaderos, things started to go wrong. It was as if half of the group had decided that was it, walk finished. Never mind the 3.25 km we still had to go. They were all over the place. They were stopping to talk to every horse, dog and cat we passed. Jelle was conducting gardening classes. Some were trying to sneak into the bar. We had to send numerous search parties out to recover the lost souls wandering around Pinos aimlessly, it was a complete shambles. There was even talk that next time we should take whips with us to try and maintain some discipline amongst the lower ranks.
 Miraculously we arrived back at the cars with only 2 less than we started with. The weather had stayed dry, we had walked on new paths and we were left feeling contented with the morning's exercise.  
We walked 12.1 km and climbed 627 metres.
 In the afternoon we went round to Ray and Caroline’s and a  birthday party for Graham, their son. Congratulations old boy.

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