Stupor or stupidity? I’m not sure which best sums up my state of mind at the moment.
Parked up on this mountain top we have fallen into a sort of routine that isn’t marked by the time on our phones (we rarely check). We wake when the light through the gap in our skylight blind finally filters through our eye lids. We batten down the hatches when the sun has set behind the mountain and the air temperature drops. We wander into the bar when the sound of cheerful voices drift up with the seasonal scent of the log fire. We fall asleep when the wine bottle delivers drips instead of a glassful and we eat when the stomach juices tell us to (it’s usually Gareth’s stomach that signals mealtime, by the way, and on my time-scale those mealtimes seem to come around rather quickly). The things that intrude on my mental vacuousness are pings and pangs related to the family at home.......plus a howling dog guarding an empty house on the mountainside and mourning its lonely state.
El Berro is a rather special place. Most of the other campers here are keen mountain bikers, well equipped for this far-ranging, steep and rocky terrain. The age profile of the active hikers, bikers and climbers around here makes us wonder what happened to us, given that we have only two good hips between us and one of those is a metal one. Each morning there’s the regular sight of Lycra-clad skinny septuagenarians bootling off in search of a new trail and ridge-top. We’ve had to hide our one-and-only bike rather than risk derision - it’s an old one that Gareth has fixed up as ‘emergency transport’. It wouldn’t even cope with getting us safely around the village here, given the state and incline of the roads. The bike written off and Hymer still resting after her own ‘hip operation’ (the wheel bearing) and from the shock of the road to this place, we’ve nursed our arthritic limbs and wondered how to explore this beautiful place. Our solution? No, we didn’t head off to Decathlon, the sports shop in Murcia, in search of some high-tech mountain bikes; we hired a car.
There’s always someone around who knows a-man-(or even a woman of course)who-can and Pitu (his nickname) duly arranged for delivery to the site of a diesel Renault Cleo that enables us, with the dogs, to get up on some of those ridges ahead of the aged-but-super-fit scramblers. It’s a pretty good scrambler itself, as so many of the roads around here are dirt, gravel and steep. We’re rather glad now that we didn’t bring the car we bought with a view to towing it behind the MH; it would not have coped in this environment.
So the hire car has enabled us to get about and see this part of Spain without dragging Hymer into inaccessible places. We’ve driven all through the forest park right to the top of the mountain, Espuna; well, almost to the top, which is a military communications site, so entry is barred. We’ve driven out into the Barranco (canyon) Gebas, a huge and fascinating moonscape-like area which channels the water from the mountain. We marvelled again at what the geology shows of its own timescale compared with ours and wondered when this place gets the sort of rainfall that carves out such a landscape. Last night we found out, and it’s still bucketing down! We had intended going down to the market in Alhama de Murcia, the ‘local’ town, but the thought of getting caught in a landslide has rather put us off!
The car enabled us to wriggle into last weekend’s Black Friday shopping mayhem in Murcia when we went off in search of our dogs’ special food (as I said, stupor and stupidity sums up our present mind-set and we hadn’t absorbed the hype). We’ve been able to scout for our next camping spots along the coast, and have found some very promising ones. We were able to park up at the sea-front in Aguilas where motorhomes would not be allowed and enjoy a paella under the shade of a seafront cafe awning (it was actually more a rain-cover on this occasion).
Next Monday the rental company come to take back our little Renault friend. As with all things here, the longer you want something, like a campsite pitch or a car rental, the cheaper it gets. We’re already wondering why we didn’t ask to have it for longer. As regards the Hymer and the pitch she’s on, she seems pretty settled and in no hurry to negotiate those hairy, scary hairpins back down the mountain, so........maybe we’ll stay a bit longer. We came for the sun but hey, ho - it might be stupid but even in the rain I’m enjoying the stupor.
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