Sunday 26 November 2017

Altea, Spain – Days 33 to 39



Can't beat a selfie!
After more than five weeks here in Altea, Costa Blanca we’re feeling pretty relaxed and at home. Richard and Elizabeth have, for the last week, been in Scotland visiting friends, so we have been housesitting here, looking after Pepa cat and completing a number of DIY jobs for them, as well as having a couple of social evenings at R&E’s friends and family and three days out, one climbing, one in the mountains, one in old town Altea.

The narrow streets of Altea Old Town
Our climbing was at a crag near Alcalali that we’ve been to before. That wasn’t our first choice, I wanted to do the Toix ridge, a 5c grade multi pitch route up the face then roped scrambling over the knife edge ridge, past the TV masts and back, but it didn’t happen. The car park was full of mini vans and a big group gearing up to climb and, although we managed to gear up and get there before them there were a few other groups climbing nearby making it seem very busy. Taking into account that we haven’t climbed above 4+ for some time and that we had an audience meant that our heads weren’t quite set up to tackle something that hard so we bailed out and went elsewhere.

The Capilla del Cristo church
Alcalali is a roadside crag with a big range of routes, mainly single pitch and grades from 3+ up to about 8, so we went to an area we’ve been to before to tackle some grade 4 to 5 climbs, mainly to see how we’d get on doing 5’s before thinking about the Toix ridge. First climb, a grade 4, went very smoothly, nice natural limestone, plenty of bolts, hot in the sun, but belay in the shade. Second climb a 4+, much more vertical and exposed, requiring some thinish exposed moves to clip the next bolt. I took a few deep breaths, clipped but grabbed the quickdraw to clip in – breathe, then easily to the top. Jackie led with a bit more confidence through the thin bit, we left the rope in place so we could tackle the grade 5 next door that uses the same lower off. Well, we both did it on the top rope and didn’t fall off, but we felt on the edge at some places and glad we hadn’t led it. Maybe we’re not up to the Toix ridge yet, good decision to bale! When we think we have led 6b’s and 6c’s in the past and now find 5a’s hard – we’re lightweights these days, but as long as we can enjoy what we do its OK. We’ll wait until someone else who climbs better is out here and get them to lead the Toix ridge! Alex and Rob, fancy another trip out here? Finished the day on a very long grade 4 climb, actually 26m, which meant that we only just managed to abseil down on our 50m ropes due to rope stretch. Should have noted the halfway mark going through the belay plate and several meters up and knotted the two ropes to ab down, but hey, we made it! Home for beers on the terrace and contemplate how much better we used to be!

Recreation of a scene from Jackies youth
Easy next day was spent looking round Altea old town, which dates back to 1617 and sits on a small hill overlooking the harbour, the new town and the surrounding mountains with lots of narrow streets and viewpoints. Took in the viewpoint that Jackie remembers visiting in her childhood, before her dad and Elizabeth even bought the house in Altea-La-Vella and were just visiting. Coffee stop in the square and a visit inside the Capilla del Cristo chapel, that was built in 1854 over the remains of the original 17th century church and then a stroll down to the beach and along the seafront. Lunch at the Andalucia seafood restaurant in Calpe, which was a bit of a drive away, but Jackie wanted chopitos (fried baby squid) and nowhere in Altea quite fitted her requirement.
The square and Jackie sitting enjoying the view (can you see her?)
The Andalucia is R&E’s favourite seafood restaurant, right on the beach and justifiably so. The Menu del dia (Menu of the day) is 12€ and includes starter (chopitos for Jackie, boquerones - small fried fish for me), bread with garlic mayo, mains of whole fish, dessert and half a bottle of wine each. We were totally stuffed after that, Jackie needing a power nap after as she had drunk about ¾ of the bottle of wine as I was driving!

We spotted this cat hiding to observe a bird hopping about....
And this would have been the birds view
Our mountain day hike was a great success, the book I have only covers the mountains on this side of the valley and I really wanted to hike to the top of one of the mountains we look at from the terrace on the other side of the valley. Puig Campana, the big pointy one on the left we have done before, but I wanted to tick some others off, so after searching routes on the internet, studying the route on Google satellite view and comparing it to the Navmii offline maps I have on my phone we set off with no map, but confident I knew the route via the map on my phone, our intended target, Sierra de Aitana, the very right hand peak we can see from the terrace.

Inside the Capilla del Cristo
Near the coll of the Sierra de Aitana, the path up beyond
We drove through the village of Benifato and on, steeply up hill on single track potholed roads arriving at a car park at 1000m in amazing scenery. It turn out that Sierra de Aitana is a long (5km?) abrupt wall of rock that has been pushed up by tectonic forces, steeply sloping on the other side, but a sheer 400m vertical rock wall on this, the northern side. As the rock has been forced up giant blocks of limestone have become detached forming huge voids between that seem to open to the centre of the earth, all at weird angles, with giant fissures in the ground, giving amazing scenery – a geologists dream. The hilltop village of Guadalest is in the distance, with its old buildings perched on top of vertical seams of limestone that are part of this huge tectonic movement that has formed this amazing landscape.

Making progress! The Bernia Ridgecoming into view, centre distance
Jackie is happy to point out that we did the route in the reverse of the normal way, but I like to think that I chose well, ascending on a forest 4 wheel drive track that took us east under the face, up to a coll and then back west up onto the 1558m summit with amazing views over the 400m sheer drop, our parked car a long way below, Guadalest and its reservoir in the distance, the Bernia Ridge and, below it Altea-La-Vella and R&E’s house (too far away to make out), Calpe rock in the distance set in a blue ocean and a side view of Puig Campana, showing its famous notch that we can’t see from the house. Amazing!
Lunch stop. Bernia Ridge and Calpe rock left, Puig Campana and the notch on the right
Jackie walking towards the edge of the world!
Great place for lunch. Onwards towards the secret (!) military base on the far summit with its golf ball antenna, numerous masts and building that I read are part of a joint US and EU military communications network for Europe and north Africa. We didn’t make the ascent to the base (couldn’t get in anyway), but headed down the path through the most amazing jumble to tectonically displaced giant blocks of rock I have seen, I was in awe, but Jackie seemed less impressed. Back at the car in less than 3.5 hours having covered about 9km and about 600m of ascent and home for a beer on the terrace and a distant view of our achievement!

In this photo is R&E's house, but you can't see it! To the right of the rocky summit is a distant Bernia Ridge with Calpe rock in the blue ocean. The house is on the slope of the Bernia Ridge
Jackie contemplates the amazingly broken rock
A lovely couple of evenings out, one at Jane and Michaels who cooked us a fabulous meal with plenty of wine and a second at Carolyn and John’s house for G&T’s, wine and really nice tapas. Lovely to catch up with them, great food and company.

We’ve more or less finished our DIY jobs of wall painting, floor varnishing, wood filling and staining, we have only to clean up a bit and get ready for R&E’s return tomorrow (Monday) evening, so seafood lunch at a beach bar in Altea today after a walk along the front and now we’re relaxing before dinner. Weathers a bit colder now, still reasonably sunny, but quite cold at night.

Jackie stands on the edge of a huge void between giant blocks of rock
More ruptured landscape
Next Thursday we leave here for five nights housesitting in Gibraltar then a bit of a tour to Malaga, where we hope to meet up with Jean and Jimmy who we met on our cruise from South America in May, then Ronda, then Granada with the Alhambra and the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, before returning here again on 12th December. Whether we then stay here for Christmas or not depends on the snow in the Alps. At the moment it’s looking good, people are skiing there despite no lifts running yet as there’s plenty of snow. The lifts start opening on 15th December, so we may be off soon after returning if it keeps on like this…..
On our way down

Guadalest is in the valley in the centre of this photo
Steamed mussels and white wine on the terrace just before sunset

The wine has nearly gone and so has the sun

Our accomplishments so far as seen from the terrace. Puig Campana is the big pointy one on the left, just right of where the sun has just set. Sierra de Aitana, our latest one, is the highest bit on the far right (actually taller than Puig Campana, although it doesn't look it from here). But there are all those pointy tops in between yet to do!
 

Sunday 19 November 2017

Altea, Spain – Days 25 to 32



Brian, Richard & Jackie hard at work
Not really much to report on the last week, we've worked hard jet washing the floor tiles in the garden followed by sweeping up the mud and mess, painted our side of the big wall between us and the neighbours and varnished floor tiles in the entrance hall. The hand rail was delivered for the pool steps on Monday, a moment of personal triumph, the delivery man rang first, to check someone was in and for directions to get here. He had no English and speaking Spanish on the telephone without being able to wave my arms around is much, much harder, than a face to face conversation!







Start of the Sierra de Olta walk
We went out for a walk to the Oltas on Wednesday thinking we'd give Elizabeth peace for packing, but we were back much earlier than expected. Following the timings in the guide book we were pretty much bang on, in and then up to the first summit. After that however he gave an hour and a quarter to walk 600 metres to the second summit, after we'd already done most of the ascent! 


Heading up Broad Gully with Calpe and the Penon behind
We'd had the excitement by then anyway, as we were walking back from the first summit we'd met the Google streetview man, photographing the trail, so you never know, in time we may be on streetview. This however is not the first time we've met the streetview man, the first time was in the painted desert in Arizona in 2014 and it still doesn't appear to be on the web, so we are not holding our breathes! See Youtube video of summit panoramas: https://youtu.be/3_g1QkE0Bps


Brian on the south summit
Carolyn popped round in the afternoon, to drop off her Christmas cards to be taken back to the UK. Her twin granddaughters had been born a week before, so she was looking slightly frazzled. Hospitals work slightly differently here, apparently, nurses provide medical care, but anything else is provided by the family, so she had been taking it in turns with her son, being in the hospital to feed Amy and the twins and provide whatever assistance they might need. Along with looking after 6 year old Isabella..... it was lovely to see her and give her some 'normal' time, though we couldn't even offer her a drink, as despite taking food in for Amy, she had ended up feeding herself in the hospital canteen, and got food poisoning!








The Google Streetview man
Apart from that, other socials have been lunch at Dagmar and Michael's, a delicious BBQ of rabbit and secreto pork, another Chinese meal, this time in Albir with dad's bridge partner Alan and wife Vera and Elizabeth's bridge partner Lynne and her husband Gerald. Then, on Thursday, a lunchtime trip to the fish restaurant in Calpe with D&E and Jane and Michael before D&E headed off to the UK on Friday. 







Panorama of the Bernia Ridge from Sierra de Olta north summit

Plot of our walk: http://www.mapmywalk.com/workout/2576979169
Consequently we are now home alone again, looking after Pepa and the house. Yesterday we had a chilling day, went and got the Saturday Telegraph for news and crossword which we had with a cooked brunch, before garlic rabbit and Strictly! Today however, back to jobs, but we are round at Jane and Michael's for dinner so don't have to worry about feeding ourselves. Our excitement this morning was a call from Will, the Dutchman who owns the house next door (the Dutch equivalent of Terry Wogan apparently). They also left on Friday morning, but he had managed to convince himself that he hadn't turned the heating off. A fairly major problem as they might be back for New Year, if not it might be April! He had of course turned the heating off, but it did give us the opportunity to have a little look at their house, which started off originally the same as this one, and the one the other side, but over the years they have all been modified. Interesting to see other people's architectural ideas.

At Dagmar and Michaels. LtoR: Richard, Elizabeth, Dagmar, Michael & Jackie
The Bernia Ridge from Dagmar & Michaels. The very left hand (low) summit is the only one we haven't yet done
The setting sun from the balcony
Elizabeth strikes a pose
Elizabeth dressed up and posing for a photo on the new pool steps
Unfortunately Richard, who was taking the photo, couldn't get Elizabeths camera to work so had to have a lesson
Pepa cat sneaks down the steps to get a drink of water as the pool is filled
The pool is finished!
Pepa inspecting our work
Home alone with Pepa

Friday 10 November 2017

Altea, Spain – Days 18 to 24



Jackie abseils with Mascarat gorge and the Bernia Ridge in the distance
Another week here in Spain and numerous bottles of wine and beer have been drunk and plenty of good food. It’s been hard work as well (I have the blisters to prove it), but mixed in with a bit of play in the form of mountain walking, rock climbing and socialising with friends and family.





Jackie, Jane, Michael, Elizabeth and Richard enjoying pre-dinner drinks
There’s been a pretty dramatic downward shift in temperatures this last week though, still mainly sunny with a few partly cloudy days, but a cold wind making daytime temperatures between about 17C to about 22C and night times into single figures of 8 or 9C so, although it’s still hot in the sun in the daytime, gone are evenings of sitting outside after dark and, last night the first fire was lit in the lounge. The bonus of this though is that the cold wind is the result of a low pressure sitting over the Alps bringing the first fairly heavy falls of snow onto the ski resorts, so it’s looking good up there. We’ll keep an eye on that and head up there when it’s all open.

Richard looking nervous as the builders unload their materials
Jackie and her dad peering over the balcony
The hard work on the swimming pool has been continuing, the earlier wire brushing of the old grouting was not sufficient in certain areas so serious scraping to get the old grout and mould out all the way round the curve between the walls and the bottom was required using various screwdrivers to get in. Taking into account that the tiles are less than an inch square there was a huge amount of screwdriver work needed.
And they are off with the first bricks in place
Back, shoulders, fingers, stomach muscles and skin on fingers all suffering, but the job is done, the re-grouting done and briefly looking good before the builders turned up on Wednesday to build the new steps to give easy access to the pool. They have worked amazingly quickly and, as I write, they are virtually finished having built five steps, re-plumbed one of the water jets and tiled in two days – impressive work! All that’s needed now is a new rail to be fitted once it arrives. Interesting for me to watch and the balcony gives a great overview of how they are doing, but they probably didn’t much like being watched. I attach a few photos of their progress as I’m sure our readers will be very (yawn) interested (is that the time?).

Jackie and I went for a coffee in town with Elizabeth leaving Richard in control at home
Its all going on!
Anyway, we’ve been out on a few walks into the mountains and the cooler but sunny weather is really ideal for energetic walking (but sunscreen is still required) and even out rock climbing in direct sun is no longer a problem, maybe a bit hot in sheltered spots, but nothing to complain about, it’s almost perfect weather for that.




But they make amazing progress. Here he is repiping the water jet
Bit of an incident on today’s walk, I quite fancied a steep walk up from Algar up to do the west summit of Pena Severino, which is the very last, relatively insignificant peak on the Bernia ridge, which we’ve never done. It’s not actually part of the ridge, but is a separate much lower point, but I really want to tick it off. Jackie thought an easier walk to see the waterfalls at Algar might be nice, which I’ve also never seen and quite fancied. The falls are very touristy and relatively short, but are worth the €4 entrance fee, so I agreed to that and then casually mentioned that we could continue up the mountain path towards the Pena Severino summit afterwards if we fancied it…

Still the same day and now he's rendering
Nice waterfalls, cool but sunny day, too cold for swimming in the pools but really quite nice looking, and very few people about (apparently they are packed with tourists in the summer months). The arboretum was relatively uninteresting, but a pleasant walk and it finished at a picnic area all shut up for the winter, except for the very excited, but very thin black cat that ran up to us for fuss and to see if we had anything to eat. We hadn’t, except for some brioche that we’d taken for a snack, but she seemed quite happy to eat anything we gave her and wanted as much fuss as we were prepared to give. A nice moment and she seemed quite happy when we left going off to patrol her empty property, so hopefully she’ll managed to feed herself and possibly her babies that it seemed she might have somewhere judging by the look of her.

And today its the tiling. The finished pool will have to wait until the next blog
So the incident occurred after we left the waterfalls and headed off up the hill towards Pena Severino on the mountain path. We reached a path junction and there ahead were a big group of beehives (don’t know what you call a collection of beehives). Jackie went to have a look, standing 20 or so feet away but, after a couple of minutes several bees came after her and no matter how much she swatted and ran away they were not to be deterred, following her quite a distance until one managed to get into her hair and stung her.
A scrambly walk over the Bernia
I managed to pull the sting out, but a big red circle appeared in her hairline with a smaller white circle and, right in the centre, an angry looking red point. That was the end of the walk as we thought we ought to get down as fast as possible just in case she got any sort of reaction. She didn’t, we got back down, went and had lunch at a bar by the waterfalls and headed back home for an afternoon beer on the balcony and a look at the workers finishing off the tiling on the swimming pool steps. The mark on her head has gone, she’s fine and the western summit of Pena Severino is yet to be done!

Lunch on the balcony with Jane and Michael
The socialising has also been in full swing here, from Sunday lunch on the balcony with Jane (Elizabeth’s sister) and Michael, a fabulous all you can eat seafood buffet in Albir with R&E, followed by a dancing show and a live two piece band where we were able to do some ballroom dancing (what a pity we didn’t take the dance shoes, but we managed anyway), fabulous Chinese meal with R&E and Richards half-sister Dee and partner Robert and, this Saturday, lunch at Dagmar and Michaels. All very pleasant.

And this was lunch, what about that for a leg of lamb!
Must finish it’s almost time to open the early evening, pre-dinner wine and crisps and watch the sunset, before wrapping up and lighting the fire!









A little scramble on our walk

It was worth it for the view from the top!

A view of R&E's house from up high. Their house is dead centre of this photo, but you can hardly see it amongst the trees

About to go over an edge on the way down

Looking down from my belay on a climb with Jackie preparing to climb

I'll just enjoy the view while she messes about down there!

Jackie abseiling back down

The Algar waterfalls today

The Algar waterfalls. Very touristy but a pleasant hours stroll

The waterfalls from a distance

Here's the very thin black cat in the deserted picnic area that really wanted to see us

The beehives on the mountain path just before they set upon Jackie

And this was the sting I pulled out of her head

Views on the way back down. I call this art!