Gotcha!!

I woke up the next morning feeling tired, poor sleep, but I wanted to beat that ridge above Sella. I was late setting off, about 10am, and didn’t hit the track until nearly 11. I took the same route but this time after a quarter of a mile I noticed a faint path up to the right. No yellow and white stripes though. After a climb of a few hundred feet I saw the first sign. This was the route I should have taken yesterday! The path broadened to a track and the signs started again.

It was another cloudless, hot day in mid-March! Everything went right; I found the road, I found the path up to the ridge and, after a few dead ends, I found the summit and the spectacular views from the five mile length of the ridge.

On the top I came across this fabulous fossil of a shell, thinking that this was a distant cousin of the fossilised shellfish I’d come across round Lyme Regis six months before. Then I saw these prints in the hard earth, which must have been mud at the time the beast ran over it. Wild Boar or wild goat? An hour later I spooked a herd of wild goats and they leapt spectacularly over a ridge between two gorges on the mountain side. I’m blessed to be able to afford to come here and spend time to get in the mountains and to see such beautiful sights, and to have such a lovely wife who understands and supports my need to do it (when she’s not kicking me pissed out of the car!).

I really enjoyed the ridge but getting down was more problematic. Over the back the mountain drifted down through terraces full of flowers and almond trees in blossom. Piece of (almond) cake.

However I needed to come back down to Sella and it was late afternoon so I needed to find the scree slope down the eastern side, which was much steeper. I walked over the sharpest limestone pavement I’ve covered in my life, and the boots Adam gave me stood up to this toughest task. Then I found the route through to the 2,000 foot scree slope which tumbled down to the road to Sella. The photos don’t give a clear impression of the steepness of these rock walls and scree slopes, but they’re lovely anyway!

If you ever do this walk don’t rely on the yellow/white stripes. They stop halfway up and halfway down, and they’re neither up nor down – boom boom! Seriously, the stripes leave you having to climb down quite intimidating rock faces which for experienced climbers are a piece of cake but for people like me who walk, they’re much more difficult. But what a great day and what a fabulous experience.