24 March Monachil

Great walk a pity about the weather

I have every sympathy with all our friends in Northern Europe who are covered under a blanket of snow so deep that you have to go back to the last ice age to find so much of it about. Here in the valley we are also suffering, you cannot go out of the door for two minutes without getting wet. I blame it all on these wind turbines, when we had coal powered power stations and global warming, winters and summers just kept getting hotter. Now they have closed them all down and put these turbines up it’s cold, wet and windy.

We had planned a walk around Monachil this week but things did not look too promising as rain was forecast. With every one suffering from cabin fever I was under a lot of pressure to lay on a bit of sun. I spent all Saturday night pouring over weather charts, reading the tea leaves ( difficult when you can only get tea bags) and staring at my crystal balls. By 7 am Sunday morning I was confident we had a weather window, a few hours of fairly dry weather.

We had a large group for what was a grey overcast day but at least it was dry as we left Monachil. We had not gone too far before it started to rain a little. It was not bad enough to want to turn around and there was always the hope it would only be a passing shower. We had not planned on following the river this time, which was fortunate as it was in flood after all the rain and snow. Anybody falling into it this week would have been swept away. The walk was a circular one sticking to the higher ground, only crossing the river once at the far end. The rain continued until lunchtime, when a patch of blue sky appeared and we stopped for a short break.

Kees had been out of sorts all day, he had been stumbling about and talking incoherently, we all thought it was because the lenses had fallen out of his glasses but no, he had a far weightier problem on his mind. He wanted to make a confession and he took the opportunity with everyone around to unburden himself of his troubles. Last week when we were out on the midweek walk we were facing a difficult situation, trying to get across a swollen river. Full story can be read here . Kees saved us from having to get our feet wet by mentioning he had seen a bridge a little way down the river. I thought it was an incredible piece of observation and well worthy of a Brownie point. As you may know these points are not awarded indiscriminately, they have to be earned. Unusually within the group there was some dissent as to whether such a prestigious award should be made for finding a bridge. I thought for once we would give democracy a try, so I organised a secret ballot, which has raged all week. Finally, with all the votes counted I was able to announce Kees had a 3 to 1 majority in favour ( there were a number of spoilt papers ). What came out over lunch was the fact that he had not discovered the bridge at all, Dave had discovered it and Kees was taking all the glory. He had even had the gall to try and vote for himself in the secret ballot. This leaves the group in a dilemma, I for one think Kees has received this award undeservedly. I have checked the rule book for guidance on this matter and it states once given Brownie Points can’t be taken away. We had amended the rules a few years ago after Graham had tried to remove some points, once again from Kees. The only provision I can see that covers this is a small subsection that says Brownie Points can be rescinded if renounced by the recipient. We could then pass it along to Dave, even though it would be second hand and would always be tainted with corruption I think he would be pleased to accept it.

After lunch we made our way back down into Monachil with the rain steadily getting worse, by the time we made it to the cars we were all well and truly soaked.

I think everyone enjoyed it, it was a good walk for a wet day in some stunning scenery.

We walked 10.8 km and climbed 578 metres.

In the afternoon we went around to Hilary and Graeme’s for tapas.

Thanks Kees you make everything worthwhile.