Trees & Lakes

The purpose of our Thursday walks is to check out new routes and assess their suitability for the main Saturday group, that has diverse abilities, and today the route was suggested by John Milborrow from Teba.

We made an early start as the temperature at this time of year is usually very hot, but fortunately today’s weather was almost perfect with a cloudy sky and a cooling breeze.

The general area of the walk was the Embalses near to Ardales, otherwise known to most as ‘The Lakes’ and our route started from a parking area just over one of the dams. The first section of the

route was along a somewhat rough track which rose quite steeply from the main road and after only a couple of hundred metres we encountered our first problem, a locked gate across the track. This was obviously to prevent vehicles from entering the Olive Groves as we found that the fence stopped some metres short of the gate and we were able to access the field and by-pass the gate and then back onto the track. This track took us through some very large commercial Olive Plantations but offered us some amazing views across the vivid blue lakes and to the surrounding patchwork of fields.

The route then takes a right turn up a quite steep field track and departs the Olive Plantations and takes us along the edge of the Pine Forest. At the top of this rise we were treated to more splendid views, this time towards

Teba, with it’s Castle and the Embalse Guadalteba which flooded the village of Peñarrubia in 1972. We continue our ramble along the well maintained access tracks in the forest and eventually come upon an information board relating to the Necrópolis de las Aguilillas and decide that a detour is called for to investigate this.

This proved to be a very interesting find, we followed the route to the Necropolis and then onto

discover a Trench that was built and used to defend the hill in the Spanish Civil War. Whilst in this location we were privileged to see almost a dozen Eagles soaring on the thermals above us and one even passed within 10 metres of us, a magnificent sight. We continued to follow the marked route back to the entrance of this feature and re-joined our planned route back to the start, through the Pine Forest, until we reached the Tarmac road back to our parking area.

We then ambled across the dam, viewing the large fish in the water below us, and to El Kiosko for a well earned lunch.

This route is definitely included in the Saturday schedule.

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