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Spain 2005 - continued
Saturday March 12
Rest Day
Because of the rigors of yesterday it was decided to make Saturday a rest day. For me, it was an enforced rest day because unexpectedly during the night, my knee started to ache considerably. Some how yesterday, it must have been when I slid down a loose section of terracing on the descent from the ridge; I must have twisted the left knee. It seemed strange though that it only started to hurt when it was being rested during the night. Wanting to help it heal as soon as possible, I got up and raided the freezer for something cold to help reduce the swelling and only found John’s frozen pack of peas, so they had to do. ‘Sorry John’.
Friday had also seen the arrival of John’s wife Mary and her friend Marion, so later on, we the four of us went out to the Benidorm Hypermarket to top-up on food. The day finished with all eight of us traipsing around Calpe to find a suitable restaurant for us all to eat in for our last night together, as Rose, Joyce, Bob and Chris were travelling home tomorrow.
Sunday March 13th
Sunday was a rainy day. I would even go so far as to call it a very rainy day. To our astonishment, even the Peñon, that beautiful, thousand foot high chunk of rock that Calpe is famous for, was only half visible because of the extremely low cloud that hovered over its lofty summit. So, John took Mary and Marion out for the day and I strolled along the beach into Calpe, along the whole of the promenade right up to the foot of the Peñon. Which is a walk I always enjoy, even in the wet.
Monday March 14th
By the time that Monday morning came, the rain had vanished, but the low cloud still remained to warn us that the weather wasn’t playing our game. Anything could happen, so we spent a very pleasant day knocking off some more of the new routes at the low lying, nearby, Toix Placa Lower. First of all we started on ‘Ana’ which was a two star grade 4+, then we did ‘Hewa’, a two star grade 5 route and finally finished up on a route called ‘Jan’, which was another two star 4+. It wasn’t altogether a great day out, because we had been to the Toix area several times already that holiday, but I’m sure we both felt that the day had been a very acceptable day in view of the weather, and best of all hadn’t been wasted.
Tuesday March 15th
THE NORTH FACE OF EL CID
Tuesday dawned and the weather was nowhere as good as the Spanish television forecasts said it would be. This isn’t surprising because of the fact that each TV channel seemed to suggest a different weather forecast for the coming day. Hence, when one tries to think of what the weather is likely to be tomorrow, your no more the wiser and it’s a quandary as to what to do and where to go. The number of days left of the holiday were getting limited though so we decided to go and look at this ‘North face of El Cid’ which boasted a thousand foot Via Ferrater. There was a slight drizzle in the air as we drove down to Alicante, so we decided to stop off at the Decathlon store to see what they had on offer and I happily came away with a cut-priced pair of rock boots and a new descender. We then carried on towards Petrer with the wipers flicking the wet windscreen, we thought that the day didn’t look particularly hopeful, yet we pressed on undeterred, to at least find the route. We followed the approach instructions until we reached what we thought to be the place to leave the car. It wasn’t a car park as was suggested, nevertheless we unconfidently parked up and started to walk up the dirtrack road, hoping that the effort wouldn’t be wasted. It was still drizzling a little, though not enough to warrant the use of an anorak and we chatted about one thing or another until after a few miles the road turned a bend and levelled out. We were sure by then that the North Face was just above us on the hillside and we very nearly passed the spot where the Via Ferrater starts because it was set back a little from the roadside.
John at the start of the via ferrata ‘The North Face of El Cid’
All that was visible, was a small rockface with a hawser cable running up it, fixed to a few bolts. Alongside the cable were some iron-rung staples protruding out from the rockface at irregular intervals. It was only about fifteen feet high and seemed to go nowhere in particular so would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking out for it. It was time to decide what to do. Do we go on or not? It was only raining a little, yet we didn’t know what was before us. In the end we decided to try it because it wasn’t like real climbing. We had each made up a lanyard out of some tapes, two screw-gate crabs and a stitch plate, so would each climb up the staples independently. Thus we set off and began our climb up ‘El Cid’, pulling up on the staples and where they were absent, carefully placing our feet on the wet, limestone footholds as we held on to and were protected by the steel cable. There were many sections of the route that had no fixed staples to use but with the use of the cable the climbing wasn’t too hard even in approach shoes and rucksack. All in all the route took us three hours to climb and that’s with a half-hours stop for lunch, so it wasn’t a major day out. At the top, visibility was poor because of the low cloud cover and it would have been tricky to find the correct way back down to the car without a compass because there were two paths and the most obvious one we found out, went the wrong way. Still, in hindsight, we chose the correct way down and our path came right back to where we had parked the car. Believe me when I say that, ‘The North Face of El Cid’, is a very good, adventurous, day out, even in poorish weather.