No more workers for whom to look completely dumb today, although, at one point, we wondered as a car parked outside our fence. It turned out to be someone working on the roof of the neighbours’ house oppostite. Phew!
Having had a lazy extended weekend, we decided to try another walk in the valley and picked a short one from a package of walks that we picked up from the Tourist Information Centre in Jalon. This was a 4.5 km circular walk from and to Senija just down the valley towards Benissa. The leaflet says that it takes between 3 and 3.5 horas which I suppose should have been a warning; averaging little more than one kilometre an hour must say something.
We drove from Jalon, through Lliber to Senija, found a parking spot and set off in fine style with no trouble. The route climbs up to a cross at Creu de les Bassettes (must be French) at 411 metres for some good views of the Val de Pop. The route continues, if you are lucky enough to be able to follow it (!) along a ridge to a corniche right above the local autopista (A7), below which is the Cova de la Garganta (Giant’s cave?) where, it is said, a bandit called “La Tona” used to hang out waiting for unsuspecting travellers.
Now the fun starts; we are half way round and progress has been good thus far, albeit with one wrong turning. We have to descend a precipitous, loose-rock-strewn slope towards the motorway with no obvious path, and the cairns that we were originally following seem to have ended. I would hate to have to do this without our walking poles. (It occurs to me that, by the time a bandit made it down this slope in one piece, any passing traveller would be half way to Alicante!) We should apparently come across a gravel path leading to the right parallel to the motorway. Wrong! All we get to is the fence separating us from the motorway. Tacking right, we do manage to fight our way through some trees, up and down some terracing walls, and eventually manage to pick up something that might be describable as a gravel path.
Anyway, this “path” does lead in the correct direction and we do find our way back to Senija and our car in time for a trip to the supermarket in Benissa. We deserve a treat and find some excellent pulpo (octopus) and bread for a small snackette with a bottle of vino blanco in the late afternoon.
Oh, and it’s started raining a little.
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