Mountain terrain

Sunday, 20 September 2009 09:03

These mountains are definitely NOT the Pennines!

We are heading towards crossing the Pennines on the Rochdale Canal (we hope!), but before we do, here are some mountains that are a "world removed" from our English green swathes!

When I was a child one of my Father's delights was "going bush". Many a holiday he would hive off the main road and enter a world of country lanes, rough roads, mountain passes and precipitous drops away to rivers, valleys and inhospitable land! Scotland, the South Downs, Switzerland, Germany and France all fed his sense of adventure.

I must have inherited some of this joy - partly through "suffering" his explorations. So the prospect of a trip into the Spanish mountains around the city of Murcia was really attractive!

First we had to negotiate the motorway through the mountains

Then up we went into them and found a rough track to follow for a bit. It got a little too rough to risk the hire car so John did a 6 point turn on the dirt track, with a steep fall behind the car!

The view up

The view down

The car parked so Carolyn and I could negotiate the scrub to look at the view

We returned to the tarmacked road and followed it to the official view point. This was a steep climb up and at 40 degrees C I decided that wild horses would not get me up there! The others left me in an air conditioned car watching the temperature rise to 45 degrees outside!

Lonely car

Apparently the views of Murcia were spectacular, judge for yourself from this panorama!

Murcia City and Cathedral

Once everyone was back in the cool car we set off again, (cool as in temperature, not looks. It was very functional and full of storage space - enough room for 4 people and 2 sets of golf clubs with room to spare - or 7 people and no golf clubs!).

John skilfully drove us up some very narrow roads with precipitous drops one side and sheer cliff the other. It was fortunate that some of this was one way, as I dread to think how two cars could pass. It can be scary to meet a Spanish driver - as we found out on the narrow two way bits - they are fast drivers and seem to have no nerves!

I was unable to take photos, as I was too busy watching the road and anticipating trouble!

Once we got to the top the only way was down! Again it was John's skilful driving that drew admiring comments from his passengers, some of whom were glad to be at the bottom amongst isolated farms in a very hostile environment. The farmers manage to terrace the land and grow crops and we passed a large area of new terrace and planting that was impressive.

Looking back to the mountain farms and pass

I couldn't resist this Spanish-man's castle

I have one more Spanish tale to tell so look out for it!