Rodalquilar to St. Jose

It’s been long day! Finally after 8 hours of mountain climbing, and walking, we arrived in St. Jose and had our first disagreement. Ken recorded 12.9 miles against Kim’s meagre 11.5 miles while Dave and Anne were past the point of caring unless another hill was involved…… in that case they would have a very strong opinion..

This morning, we said goodbye to Eckhard our German host, but first we had to listen to another lecture. This time it was about which restaurants to avoid and why his boutique hotel was the best in Spain, so far we haven’t seen any other Nissen hut based accommodation so he may be right and he does have a fantastic garden.

Approaching the first road, we were passed by a peloton of Movistar team cyclists practising team tactics which they can do easily down here. Similar to Portugal and Madeira the lovely roads built with EU money, most of which John is convinced he donated personally, are completely devoid of traffic. They whooshed past us as we struggled up the first hill of the day to the viewpoint at Mirador de la Amatista. On a clear day, views along the coast must be spectacular. We checked route instructions and, at 2.7 km, we were 20 minutes ahead of schedule – go us!

Most of the landscape is low growing and scrubby but a short detour down to Cala los Toros through a grove of palms created a very different atmosphere. In this terrain, 3 trees are a grove – we are in the only official desert in Europe.

Next stop was La Isleta del Moro, a little fishing town with a cafe. Our walking location is quite remote and this is the only cafe mentioned in all seven walk options. According to our notes, we were still ahead of schedule and treated ourselves to a cuppa. 5k down only another 12 to go!

An hour later we’d rounded the bay and stopped for lunch at Los Escullos beach, in the shadow of the ruined fort of Castillo de San Felipe. Already tired and not yet halfway, with our highest climbs still to come, we had a great view across the bay to La Isleta. The white fossilised dunes lining the beach are oolite – calcium carbonate from animal bones worn down and encrusted with sand.

Leaving the beach we joined the ‘Loma Pelada’ route along the coast taking us all the way to San Jose. We’d walked 12 km in 4.5 hours and were flagging just as the terrain became hilly with lots of loose stones under foot. It was very hard work and we seemed to be taking it in turns to slip and fall. We will spare you the photos of grazed knees but here’s a taster of the terrain.

San Jose tantalisingly came into view but there was another 3km descent on nasty loose stones before we came to a beautiful tarmac road into town.

We arrived at the hotel and collapsed, rather too tired to appreciate the views from our terrace.

Eckhard had told us sternly not to eat in the hotel. In low season there’s not much choice so that’s where we are! Kim was pleased that Dave offered to share Creamy Lobster Rice with her, she’s just not sure it was lobster