Relleu to Benifallim – win some lose some

Strange coincidences. When I arrived at Casa Perla yesterday afternoon it was a welcome sight I can tell You. Well, I did I with a capital letter and You my dears are no less important.  It looks nice.

Over to the right is a garage door and I heard voices from inside so I popped my head in, expecting some bloke to be working on a car. Instead it was converted into a bar. Pearl, the co-owner, laughed. Her and her partner Huib (Dutch) had passed me earlier in the day driving to Finisterra to buy my breakfast as all the local shops were shut. Huib joked that I was their guest. They passed me coming back and said what a pace I was setting and that I must be their guest. When I popped my head in an hour later she laughed, called Huib through and he nearly wet himself. I’m not that funny.

I told Pearl that her bar looked like the Cavern. She was shocked and asked me how I knew about that. Apparently her dad was a soul singer who was backed by the Beatles in the Cavern and in Hamburg, Davy Jones. He disappeared in 1971 and she can’t find him. She thought I knew the connection.

Huib said he was from Den Haag and we both laughed about the Duelling Pianos bar, a local  very well known landmark in nearby Scheveningen. I was checking my Facebook and got onto my exiled blades group. A blade had posted on our great form and I went on his Facebook page. He was from Den Haag and had posted photos of sunsets over Scheveningen.

I went up into the village to a restaurant run by two Scottish guys, father and son. Salt of the earth. I said both sides of my family came from Scotland but I’d done some ancestry research and couldn’t find it. The dad said ‘Bloody hell’ I’ve just been on the phone talking to my cousin less than five minutes ago about tracing our ancestry. 

I had a pint, they gave me another pint, cooked fabulous potato and onion soup and chicken balti with chips(exquisite) and charged me £8! My turn to say bloody hell.

My breakfast room, 8am this morning.

Lovely views, including a clear Puig Campana.

Breakfast was great and I set off at 9am. Straight away I took a wrong turn and it cost me an extra kilometre, but at that point I was ok, on good form and ready for the long walk today, starting with a 15 kilometre uphill stretch, some of it very steep. An old Moorish castle came up on my left, built in the 12th century. The Arabs ruled most of Spain for hundreds of years. 

And as I struck out into the countryside the views got better and better. 

It was still below freezing in the shade, due to the clear night, but warm in the sun. Bizarre switching between warm and cold but carrying my pack was keeping me warm enough. The frost clung to the side of the road all day.

When you don’t want to carry a lot of water these fresh water sources are brilliant.

I’d planned to turn off the road onto a footpath I’d seen on a map I’d downloaded from a Spanish government website. There was a barrier across the road saying it was private property but I thought the footpath was a public right of way. After the best part of two kilometres I realised that the dried up river bed I was following (it was too high up in the mountains to still benefit from the recent deluge) was going to be completely overgrown. Worse still, working my way back to the road, I saw a bloke on the hill up to my right in a safety vest and one coming down the hill in front of me. They were hunters armed with proper rifles, not shotguns, and there were five of them dotted round the valley. The safety vests prevented their mates taking a shot at them if they moved. The guy quizzed me but I said I was lost and asked him the way to a nearby town and he was ok. Lucky he hadn’t put a bullet up my arse. I was all in black in the shade in the undergrowth in the bottom of the valley below. There were three hunters in various positions in this shot but the definition isn’t good enough to show them.

This was a big problem. It meant I had to do a dogleg via Torremanzanos, cut up north to Benifallim and then cut west to Alcoy. All three legs meant substantial steep climbs and falls and a total kilometre count for the journey of 42 kilometres. I can’t do that with a rucksack. I can only just do it without one when the climbs are involved. I decided to see how far I could get. And the scenery stole the show.

The picture above is Benifallim. I got there and I was done in, so I phoned my hostel 12 kilometres away and they sent out a bloke who I had to bung. I’ve changed my schedule and I’m staying here in Alcoy another night. I’ll walk to Benifallim and back tomorrow to keep momentum in my legs but I’ll give my shoulders a rest and leave the rucksack in my room. Joy of joys it puts wild camping off until Tuesday night. 

And Alcoy is nice. Night night.

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