Walking Spain

Today’s walk had many different aspects to it. The first thing is that it was long (33,38 km). That wasn’t a problem but meant that I had to think about how I was going to do the walk and decided that I would concentrate not so much on the walking per se but just enjoy the day. In other words, if I wanted to stop to see something or I wanted to spend sometime in a bar having a long lunch break (which is what I did), then I simply did that and enjoyed it. Besides being long, half of this walk is on tarmac (16,3 km). You leave Cortes de Pallas on the CV428 road and you have to walk through a long tunnel to cross the Rio Jucar. You climb up out of the valley and finally you take a left turning to Castillo cheers. This is where I made my first mistake I went past the left turning because I was in in my own world and was not looking at the route properly and and just kept on walking. It was a bit of a stupid thing to do, to be honest.

Anyway so once you’re off the tarmac, it is very pleasant. The first part is uphill through a pine forest. While climbing up through the forest, I had a video call from my brother, Ian, who lives in Australia. Technology is great. I am right in the middle of nowhere in the Valencian countryside (Spain) and can have an enjoyable conversation with my brother in Sydney. After a while, you come out on to more or less a flat plain. There’s a very interesting looking cave with a stonewall that has been built in front of the cave providing a garden/veggie patch type of area. Many parts of this walk go through forest and the paths are genuine paths, only wide enough for a human or a donkey. There are also fantastic views looking back across the gorges towards the river. Once you’ve gone across this flat plain up at about 800 meters, you descend down into Venta Gaeta which was my destination and where I had lunch. Lunch was great as to be expected in Spain. Everywhere you go in Spain, the food is outstanding quality. The bar was a venta specializing in meats and sausages.

After lunch, I went back the way I came. Having had a wonderful video call with my brother across the world, it turned out that the village has no Internet. I couldn’t even make a phone call. It was really strange because Spain is very well covered by Wi-Fi and and you can be in the middle of nowhere and still have Internet. But in this village, there seems to be a kind of black spot. I was cut off halfway through a phone call to my wife and that phone call was done just above the village. Once you climb properly out of the village, you immediately get an Internet and phone connection. So, you climb out of the village and get back on the plain and then climb down the other side and unfortunately you have to walk back to Cortes de Pallás on the tarmac.

I was a bit obsessed with ticks today because I’ve been reading about them a lot. I don’t think there is an excessive risk. It was a great walk and very enjoyable. It was a long walk as I said at the beginning and I haven’t much more to say about the walk except that I recommend it.

If you want to look into how you could avoid walking on the tarmac road, it would be a good idea. But I don’t know if you can do that, because you’ve got a great big bloody reservoir to get across. I think you can only get across it by going through the tunnel and over the bridge. You have to follow the road at the beginning whether you like it or not. The walk is still great. In fact, it was so very pleasant that I filmed some sort of mountain goat which I will add to this blog post. I don’t know exactly what animal it was but I managed to just about film it. 

You can check out the trail here:

https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-senderismo/cortes-de-pallas-to-venta-gaeta-128415751