A walk in the woods

Today’s walk was a little more challenging.We had 9 a.m. breakfast again; the supply of food has been dwindling throughout the weekend and today it was very scanty indeed, so we felt no compunction about rifling what little food there was for our lunchtime sandwiches, supplemented with purchases from the bakery.

The walk started with a climb up to a walkers’ refuge from which there was a beautiful panoramic view, and then continued through oak and pine woodland, lots of up and down on rocky paths. There was a constant stream of walkers, all going faster than us, including a large group of very noisy Germans — we stopped to let them get well ahead. The weather was perfect, hazy sun, not too hot. The sole real difficulty was a tall and precipitous Cork style ladder/stile, where people patiently queued up while hip-challenged Bundle tackled it under instruction from S. The French people behind us then dashed ahead saying they didn’t want to be behind us at the next stile, but fortunately there wasn’t another one.

Here are S and Bundle coming down through Binifaldo where there were beautiful ancient holm oaks (most of the woods were not so ancient because they had been clear-cut for charcoal in the last century and have regrown since). Thereafter the route was mostly on metalled road, so much easier. We were all exhausted when we got back to the Santuari, treating ourselves to ice creams all round. Stats: 10 km, 300 m climbing, 5 hours (yes we are slow walkers).

S and I crashed out for siestas, while Bundle and L visited the Santuari museum. At dinner time, the waiter greeted us: “Bad news. The kitchen is broken.” So as well as running out of food over the weekend, they had a very limited menu (judging by its contents it was the oven that was broken). Still, we ate well enough and it’s another early night.