Biking & Baking in Las Alpujarras

After 2 late nights in succession, we blew away the cobwebs today with a 5 hour walk above Berchules in the Eastern Alpujarras (Walk 12 in Jeremy Rabjohns' book) and had the hills all to ourselves except for a brief encounter with a horned mountain goat and several grouse.   This walk is really worth doing just for the beautiful mule path up the hillside and the amazing stone-built acequia on the ridge.  Also stunning views to the south and east.  Even at 1700m it was T-shirt weather - Steve still in his shorts but he had the grace to pack some lower 'legs' in his rucksack just in case!  I boiled in lined trousers and tied my jacket round my waist for the whole trip, but  I was glad of it by the time we got home (after another stupendous red/purple sunset.) .   If you decide to give it a go, we would suggest that you allow a good 5 hours for the walk, take water and don't whinge on the steep bits!!   We had coffee before and a cerveza afterwards in the excellent bar at the bus station car park...lots of photos of James Dean & Marilyn Monroe on the walls, with guitars and motorbikes hanging from the beams and a very genial owner who speaks some English.  

Back to normal routine now and I must make some lemon and ginger marmalade...