Walking at this time of the year can be very difficult because of the heat, and the scheduled walks have now ceased until September, one needs to find shade to walk in and that is limited to the areas of forest on the north facing slopes of the Sierra de Mijas and this had a finite number of routes.
The start of todays walk took us on one of our well trodden routes, departing from the track on the edge of the woods and taking the Camino Forestal until we met what we know as Tina’s Trail, a well used path through the forest which meets the fire track ot the old Helicopter landing area.
It is then along the really quite well maintained fire track towards the Casa Forestal, but just before this is the start of the Chocolate trail, so called because of the number of Carob tress on it. The actual name of this ancient water course is Cañada de las Paloma (Glen of the Dove)and I am reliably informed that no water has run in this course for at least the past 10 years (despite some prolonged periods of very heavy rain in that period) and possibly for many hundreds of years before. We have walked this course before and we emerge back onto the Camino Forestal, which we now cross and venture onto new territory to us the bottom section of the Cañada. 
This is more open that the upper section and with many rocky ‘steps’, what would have been at one time, waterfalls. The floor of the route is strewn with loose rocks and in places became quite wide which would possibly have been large shallow ponds.
The banks of the Cañada are in places sheer cliffs and are potted with many small orifices and some larger caves. One of these we climbed up to and found that there were several bats flying around.
At, what is now, the bottom end of this Cañada is the former home of Gerald Brenan CBE writer and Hispanist, from here we took the metalled roads through an urbanised area and back to our parked cars.
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