A Stroll in the Peaks

Given the offer of a free lift to/from Sheffield in early December, I snuck in a visit to Riona.  Aside from drinking tea, chatting, playing the Switch and eating out, we got lucky with a fair weather window and headed for the hills.

The Peaks had had a lot of snow the previous week and this was the first dry day for a while.  We parked at Castleton and walked south west up the route of a water course, which was an actual stream due to rain/snow melt.  Turning around we could see Peveril Castle, a ruined 11th Century castle.        

Oooh snow!

We headed up to Mam Tor, and the views opened up as the clouds briefly lifted.

Oooh look, trig time! Riona knows better than to entice me out on a walk without the promise of a trig.

Super views across the Peaks.

We made a slippy descent and walked back across the fields, as the weather closed in.  Back to Sheffield and then supper out at the lovely Sardinian Domo restaurant.  Even I was defeated by the size of the vegetable plateau I'd ordered!

Shrewsbury, Iron Bridge and the Most Beautiful Tiles

Mid November JC and I popped up to Shropshire to see some old friends of his.  On the Saturday we popped into the Shrewsbury Museum to see a 3000 year old sun pendant, then wandered around viewing the wonky old buildings and interesting wood carvings.

We took a long stroll back to the car via River Severn and The Quarry (Shrewbury's park).  

On Sunday we headed for Iron Bridge.  It was a tad misty which gave it an air of mystery.  

My treat for the day was the Jackfield Tile Museum.  Iron Bridge was the heart of the British tile industry and this outstanding collection hosts some wonderful examples of its history.  The museum is hosted in the old factory offices, and some of the rooms are left as they would have been 100 years ago.  The decorative tiles are beautiful.  I particularly love the art deco style.

So beautiful.

The museum holds a lot of tiles by an outstanding tile designer William de Morgan, many of them amassed by the prolific tile collector, John Scott, who donated some 1300 tiles to this museum.

Day Twelve - Málaga and Home

Thursday 28 October

Our flight home was early evening, so we had a pretty much a full day to explore Málaga.  We left our cases at the hotel and headed towards the cathedral.  As we'd done most of the other cathedrals we'd come across, it seemed churlish to miss this one.  

Málaga cathedral is relatively modern, being constructed between 1528 and 1782, although sited on the same area as medieval Moorish walls.  It is a typical Renaissance cathedral with beautiful, lofty ceilings and tens of individual chapels.

Although I'm not into this style of architecture/decor, I did like the modern decoration of the altars.

We then headed to the Alcazabar.  As per Granada and Seville, these are amazing buildings.  I love the architecture, the tiles and the history.  

Built in the 11th Century by the governing Muslims, it hosts three concentric walls which increasingly protect the interior.  Its gardens were a delight, with small channels of water flowing down from one garden patio to another.

And this was a familiar style of archway and courtyard.  Love it.

It also had a small tea shop complete with Mediterranean view.

130 m up the hill stands Castillo de Gibralfaro.  It is connected to Alcazabar by a walled corridor, to protect its inhabitants from hostile fire whilst transmitting between the two.  Gibralfaro was the original site of Málaga fortifications, being occupied from circa 770 BC.  This latest castle was built in the 14th Century to protect the Alcazabar, and gained renown as being the most impregnable fortress on the Iberian peninsula.    

Wonderful views down to the harbour.

I spied a lighthouse so off we went down to the harbour area.  We didn't linger as we were running short on time but it is always nice to see one of these maritime lovelies.

We went back to the hotel, collected our luggage, then it was a simple train ride to the airport to catch our flight home.  We hadn't accounted for a Spanish train strike.  We bought our tickets, went down the platform and only then, after wondering why our train was late, did we start to google and discover the news.  A sign before buying the tickets would have been helpful!  Fortunately, whenever I travel, I always built in a wide margin for dodgy transport, and this time the hour extra was used standing on the station platform.  A train eventually appeared and we all bundled on.  We made the flight in comfortable time but it's not the most stress free way to catch a plane.  

Flight home was smooth and we went from 25 deg C to a late October British cold, wet deluge in 2 hours.  Welcome home!

Day Eleven - Gorge Walking Extraordinaire

Wednesday 27 October

Today we walked el Caminito del Rey.  We'd managed to buy ourselves tickets by monitoring when the tickets were released and sitting in the internet queue for an hour.  Totally well worth it!

This path, The King's Little Path, is a walkway down the Gaitanes gorge, pinned to the steep walls.  It was built to provide access to the Hydroelectric Power station that was built in the early 20th Century.  Although it is safe, and you are equipped with helmets and entry is timed and ticketed, it's not for those who fear heights.  

The walk starts at the northern end, through a tunnel, and then a walk by the reservoir.  

At the gated entrance you are kitted up with helmet and sent off in small groups.  The actual elevated gorge element is only 2.9 km but it's not done at a pace, mainly because you cannot overtake on the narrow sections and, quite frankly, the views are so amazing that you want to linger to take it all in.  

It's not long that you start to see the remains of the previous walkways.  This walkway is a 100 years old and has been variously built, repaired and abandoned by generations of engineers.  After a series of fatal accidents in 1999 and 2000 the walkway was closed and totally overhauled, re-opening in 2005.

After a kilometre or so walk in, the walkways commence.  At times the gorge is only 10 m wide and the walls soar up to 300 m high.

Some are less precarious than others.

But I certainly wouldn't have crossed this one.  It was the lack of a handrail that spooked me.

As you can imagine, the views were wonderful - both on enclosed gorge sections and areas where it opened up.

This gorge also hosts the railway from Málaga to Córdoba, which was built in the 1840s, and the tunnels occasionally popped into view.

On many occasions you could see the former walkway, and it's dilapidated state.

Towards the south end there is huge cascade of water spewing out of the rocks.  It made beautiful rainbows.

The path crossed over via a suspension bridge, and you could see, hear and feel the spray as you wobbled across.

The elevated walkway continued a few more hundred metres, encountering a railway bridge and vertiginous views.  

Once off the walkway at the south entrance, it was helmets off, and a €1,85 bus back to the start.  All very well organised and maintained.  

Once back at the car we drove to Málaga, dropped the hire car and made our way to an uninspiring, but central, city hotel for our last night in Spain.  We wandered into the city centre and treated ourselves to a paella which seemed a very fitting last meal.