11 Jan 2010 - Calpe Coastal Walk

The walk planned for today was Smugglers Cove. However that walk has a section along a dry river bed, and involves scrambling over quite large boulders. It had rained during the night, and this would have made the dry river bed quite difficult. So instead we all opted for a walk along the coast to Calpe.

When we first did this walk about three years ago it was a small track which kept rejoining the main road and was quite difficult to walk. It has been greatly improved and now has wooden hand rails, a proper path and even picnic tables at strategic points along the way. A little tame for the Monday Club, but a very enjoyable walk for all of that.

We are currently in a particularly cold spell. Not up to UK standards with heavy snow and temperatures of minus 8c, but cold for this area. As we left the house this morning it was 2c, and had only risen to 4c when we started the walk. So everyone was well wrapped up against the cold.

This was our first walk with the Monday Club this year. We missed last week’s walk due to the cancellation of our flight back from UK, which resulted in a 30 hour journey and getting home at 2am last Monday. So there was plenty of news to catch up on.

The walk goes past the water centre, one of our regular short walks from Calpe and a nice place to have a cup of coffee and watch the sailing and other water sports. Not much happening this morning, and no stop for coffee either.

The dominating feature of today’s walk is the Ifach rock at Calpe, and we had constantly changing views of it throughout the outward part of the walk.

The Ifach was also our destination, and where we stopped for lunch. Due to recent storm damage to the path we started this walk much closer to Calpe than normal, and consequently stopped for lunch earlier – 12 noon. Many of us had not done much walking over the Christmas period, so the shorter and easier walk was quite welcome

We were lucky that the weather remained dry up to and including lunch. We even had a little sunshine. The weather forecast was for light rain at noon, but it was delayed for an hour. However most of the return walk was spent in waterproof jackets. Not at all a typical Monday Club walk, but a very enjoyable one for all of that.