Lecrin Valley Limpers

This week we had two walks planned, our big end of the month walk and a shorter walk with Hilary. Both walks started off together and offered spectacular views of the snow covered Sierra Nevada mountains. We met in Cozvijar and then drove to Gúejar Sierra where we met up with the Granada contingent. We continued the drive up the valley to the San Juan car park.  I had reservations about our newest member of the group, Antonio aged 10, but his mum said he could do the hard walk without drawing a breath.  We took the group photo at the start of the walk as we were all together,We split up after the photo, the hard group had a full day ahead of them and needed to make good time on the first section of the path. Hilary’s group had time to enjoy the wildflowers and the views in this spectacular valley.     I designated the hard walk as a 4 lunch break walk. You should have seen Conchi’s face brighten up at this news, then darken when she realized...

Something went wrong on this week's walk, we got wet!!. Yes that wet stuff that comes from the sky. It has never occurred before that we have actually set off in the rain. Whether it was the Gods trying to punish Grahame for coming with us I don’t know, but when he returned to his car it stopped raining.  Our walk this week was another new one for the Sunday group, and followed the barranco de la Arco just off the Carretera de Cabra.  We met in Cozvijar and as we were driving towards Padul it started to rain and the mist came down, by the time we arrived at our starting point it was obvious we were going to get wet, fortunately we all had our wet weather gear. Even though it has been in the bottom of my rucksack for 13 years I knew I would use it one day.  The walk starts on a nature reserve for the Alondra Rizoti, a rare un-crested Lark, only found in a few areas of Spain. Not that we stood any chance of seeing it, the visibility was down to about 20 met...

This week we went to Colomera, a small Pueblo north of Granada.We discovered this walk 12 months ago on our Tuesday outings but it was the first time we have done a Sunday walk from here. By the time we arrived in Colomera there were 21 of us in a convoy of 6 cars and I was worried there would not be sufficient space in the village for all our cars, and that we would spend half the morning rounding everyone up. Amazingly we all managed to park close together and we were soon ready for the off. I had spent the whole week polishing my crystal balls and was confident that we would not have any rain before 8pm, but one or two in the group took a bit of persuading to leave their umbrellas and waterproofs in the car.  For the last five years I have been relying on my GPS to guide us on our walks. This week I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics and walk unencumbered by electronic devices, and try using the Cerebral Cortex for navigation, that the GPS was ...

After last week's disaster of predicting a cold and wet weather walk, and ending up walking in temperatures of 25 degrees dressed in our winter woolies, I have spent the whole week polishing my crystal balls, and this week the predictions were spot on. A valuable lesson has being learned, keep your balls clean and well polished. Now I will admit when we met at Cozvijar it was spitting a bit but, as our walk this week was starting from the Cañadas urbanization 10kms away, I was confident that the sun would be shining by the time we arrived. Antonia obviously did not have any confidence in my predictions because, when we met up with her, she was sat under an umbrella putting her boots on and her poor husband Fernando had to carry it with him the whole day.  The walk starts by following a pleasant, undulating path along the side of Sierra Manar with views up to Veleta. Dave and Martine were setting the pace, unfortunately for them they did not know the route.  We ...