The next walk of note was my second attempt at El Fuerte, a small mountain behind Frigliana. I tried initially to walk this with Alison, Carl and Ethan and Ellie inthe fist week. I don’t know what was going on with me that day because I felt so unfit, out of breath and downright weird. It was hot and maybe I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough, who knows. The kids skipped on ahead of us and I knew Carl was a bit concerned when he dropped back with me. We walked about two thirds the way before I decided to turn back. It was the right decision.
After that and when Alison and Carl had gone home I kept sending Alison pictures of El Fuerte from as many angles as I could. I think I was psyching my self up.
El Fuerte has several meanings; strong, sharp or fort. Take your pick, it’s all of these.
The day before the next walk, the summit had been shrouded in cloud. The next day and (Clare’s 66th Birthday) Clare, Margaret and I set off at 0740 hours from Frigliana.
The summit is 980 meters above sea level to the trig point although there is a slightly higher rocky outcrop and our climb would be about 680 meters over nearly 9K to and from Frigliana.
We took it very slowly but I found I was absolutely fine this time.
We walked up the uneven path just beneath the ridge of the hill that sits like a buttress to the south east of the summit. On the way, I heard a strange melodious bird call and used the Merlin App to identify it and then Margaret saw it, a Golden Oriel, sitting below us it was a wonderful thing to see.
When we had gone past the point where I had stopped before, the vegetation started to dwindle and this caused Margaret to feel a bit shaky as the drop to our left was getting steeper and the trail more precipitous. We were only a short distance from the summit but the fear was making her legs really shaky. I completely get it, I had that feeling on that coast walk the fortnight before. Margaret was frustrated with herself because she knew that the bushes only acted as a visual barrier. She made the right decision to stop though and after a short break, we chaperoned her down a little way, with me trying to make a sort of human bannister with my pole and arm. There she was able to stop and recover her equilibrium while Clare and I headed to the top only a few minutes and a bit of a scramble away.
The peak was topped by a very small cairn and a demolished trig point. We surveyed all around, we could see as far as Malaga and some clouds far out to sea that probably were over the Atlas Mountains on the other side of the Mediterranean. I had heard another a strange bird call on the way up and it was identified as a bee eater, once at the summit several of the brightly coloured bee eaters flew over our heads.
When we stopped to pose for pictures, Clare was molested by a very large and insistent wasp. This was very ‘off putting’, neither of us wanted to be stung and I’m allergic so we didn’t linger. As we set off down again we met a number of people coming up, mostly Irish I think!
We headed down slowly, collecting (a by now revived) Margaret and made our way down. A bit later the same people who we’d met on their way up, overtook us going down again!
Although Margaret didn’t quite make the top, she was only a few meters shy of it and when we reached Frigliana (and having a well deserved cold drink) she remarked that the spectacular views from Frigliana seemed lessened by the ones from El Fuerte. She was quite right!
The Travelling Bee 