El Boixar-Fredes

 A short coda to bring the walk to an end.  

Vallibona-El Boixar

 Steep climb out of Vallibona. 

Morella-Vallibona

 A long days march. More details to follow. 

Ares del Maestre-Morella

 A long day’s March. More detail to follow. 

Culla-Ares del Maestre

 We bought some tremendous pizza like breads from the local bread shop before setting off from Culla.

 

Pizza?

 

One of many crosses one the entrance to/exit from villages. This one in Culla.

A sign of unknown meaning at the entrance to the small town of Benassal

 

 A Shelter or Sheep Pen

 

Looking towards Ares del Maestre in the distance

The walk to Benassal was uneventful, passing a large hotel and buildings round the source of the famous Benassal spring water. It seems you can take a health break here, although it seemed completely deserted when we passed through. After Benassal it was a long climb from about 850 metres to 1260 metres above sea level. On the way I got a call from the hotel in Ares to say that they couldn't offer supper as the hotel was having some work done. There didn't seem to be any option for supper anywhere else, so we reconciled ourselves to a small fast.

In the event, they provided us with a perfectly good meal, of 'secreto iberico' which turned out to be an enormous lump of pork, chips and pudding. They were having the source of some water leakage inside the hotel investigated  so it was all a bit dusty, but interesting. It looked like they had uncovered an enormous fireplace behind the wall of the bar.

 

 

 

Vistabella del Maestrat-Culla

 We had two days in Vistabella with our friend Nestor, who took us round the area visiting various villages like Atzeneta and Benafigos, before taking us on to Culla for our next stop. Cheating but too tempting to pass up the chance of a lift. Atzeneta was a lively little town with quite a few bars and restaurants. It seemed to be popular with bikers, as there was a constant roar of them through the main street. We sat at a roadside bar for some bocadillos and beer. The terrace was on the opposite side of the street to the bar, and it was interesting to see how the staff managed the space, constantly scanning for what needed to be done next, and how casually they walked across the street with a tray full of sandwiches and beer. Benafigos is a tiny village with a beautiful square and church.

Seemingly I have been to Culla before, with my daughter. I couldn't remember anything about it until we saw a local restaurant "La Solaneta", which rang a bell. Of course our friend Nestor remembered it in detail.

We stayed in Casa Lino, slightly outside the town centre. Very comfortable, with a 1960s English home feel to it. It even had a rocking chair and some flying swallows on the wall in the living room. 

We took a walk up to the castle, whose walls have been beautifully restored, with tremendous rocks bursting through them.

 

My brother looking at some sheds

 

 The town is lovely as well, mostly (restored) stonework.

 

Villahermosa del Rio - Vistabella del Maestrat

 We were a bit apprehensive this morning about the day’s walk. 19.5 km would be ok for us, but the ascent of over 1000 metres seemed challenging for our old bones. We set out along the road of last night’s walk, but after about 1/2 mile my brother said “I can’t see any markers”. He was right. I had relied on the IGN map which has the GR7 marked along the road we were walking on. But I should have looked more carefully because after about a mile the dashed line plunged straight down the ravine. It was clearly a notional path. So we had to retrace our steps into town and think again. I was somewhat disheartened and rang the owners of the Buhardilla to find out if there was a taxi that could take us some of the way. 

To my surprise the woman who answered the phone offered to take herself. This was more than we could have hoped for. We arranged to meet in the church square.  A quick coffee and we were off on what turned out to be a very long lift round into Aragon, past puertomingalvo and back into València to access the road up to Sant Joan. 

From there it was an easy walk to Vistabella, past deserted farmhouses and barren fields. 

 

Our stop in Vistabella was for two nights. We had a flat overlooking the valley below and the Calvary route, which we walked up the following morning. It’s quite a little trek up if you’re old or infirm, so there are handily places benches for a rest.

San Vicente de Piedrahita-Villahermosa del Rio

Two yoghurts and a banana for breakfast and two coffees in the town bar. The woman who served us was very abrupt so we drank up and left sharpish. 

It was a long boring slog out of the village along a main road, albeit nearly empty of traffic. Some way along we met a farmer by the side of the road who was interested in what we doing. We had a good chat before he waved us on our way. 

Soon after we arrived at the hermita de San Bartolomé, a lovely wayside church with arched cloister outside, where we sat and ate our lunch. 

Then onwards through rough ground to the shrine of Pino Cacho, a pine tree which in some way is said to have prevented a plague of locusts from consuming the local crops. 

After lunch it was a short walk to the town past an old mill and allotments. We were staying at the Buhardilla Rustica at the top end of town, a beautifully converted attic in an old house. This was the best place we have stayed so far, and no more expensive than other less well-appointed accommodation. We took a stroll up the hill out of town to a mirador where we could look back at the impressive gorge of the river Carbón. It looked like this road was our route out of town the next day. 

We had a mediocre but cheap meal in Hostal Ruta de Aragón, the only place in town that was open - everywhere else seemed to be closed after the fiesta of San ? 

We both slept well, my brother in a bed the size of a small country, and I on the sofa, which was very comfortable. 

Montanejos-San Vicente de Piedrahita

 We had a slowish start this morning. We were staying in Hotel Rosaleda de Mijares, a very nice hotel with views over the river Mijares. There was some confusion over the breakfast which I had forgotten I had booked two months ago. It was a fine breakfast though. 

We went to the cash machine which last night refused to give us any money to see if it had changed its mind. It had not, so we had to start off the day’s walk in hope of a more understanding machine in San Vicente. 

It was a steep climb out of the town and we soon got confused about where we were going because of differences between the route I was following and the red and white waymarks along the way. In the end we got back on to a route that both agreed with but it added an hour to the walk. 

Training ground?

Tame donkey

Flags of many nations

A long trek down to the impressive dried up riverbed of the barranco de palos, then back up to the tiny village of la Artejuela. We were both very tired by this time and the long trek back up dusty roads and rock-strewn paths was enervating in the afternoon heat. It was during this section that my brother’s boots started to fall apart! He changed into sandals for the final stretch to San Vicente, and we arrived at about 17:45, a great deal later than i expected. The bar was closed so we found the local shop and stocked up on pizza and beer for supper. Casa la Prosa where we were staying for the night had very little in the way of home comforts but was clean and warm once we’d worked out how to operate the heating.  My brother stuck his boots together with glue from the shop. We will see how they perform tomorrow!

Mas de Noguera-Montanejos

Neither of us slept so well last night. It was windy and a banging gate somewhere kept disturbing our rest. 

When we reluctantly got out of bed and made our way over to the dining room we realised how cold it had become overnight. 

Breakfast was good - enough coffee to keep us awake for several days, bread and jam, cereals with yoghourt and honey, and as many sausages left over from the previous evening’s meal as we wanted. 

Breakfast over, we started off, dressed in as many clothes as we had to keep out the piercing wind. It was marvellous to ascend through green pine trees and wild flowers, such a contrast to the depressing sight of blackened trunks and charred piles of wood. 

It was a steep climb up to the ridge of the Sierra Espina then down the other side:

With a tremendous view of mountain ranges into the distance. I can’t quite remember what happened after that - we followed the route but it seemed to be different on the ground than the map so an amount of road walking happened that we hadn’t anticipated.

We stopped for lunch at a woodcutter’s shed. Four chairs and a table plus assorted tools and interesting rubbish:

Informative signs before Montanejos

But the final part of the route to Montanejos was spectacular- a vertiginous path underneath a massive vertical limestone cliff with views down to the riverbed hundreds of metres below. 

A steep path led us down to Montanejos, where we had a great meal in bar Sede - salad, anchovies and pimientos de padron, lamb chops and salmon. Really good food and a cut above what we’ve had so far.

Bejís-Mas de Noguera

Bejís-Mas de Noguera

We slept well. Bejís is a nice little town with three bars and a shop. We patronised two of the bars last night and another bar and the shop this morning. I bought two bocadillos and an apple. After cafe con leche we set out for mas de noguera, which my friend Jay and I visited in 2015. 

The dust cloud was less oppressive this morning and we could see a clear division between clear sky inland and the gloom to the east. 

The path out of Bejís  descended  to the main road then up the other side, levelling out at a forest road. Everywhere there were the charred remains of pine trees. 

After what seemed a comparatively short time we arrived at the train station for Bejís (further away from the town than the name implies) just missing a train which would have taken us a portion of the way. There seem to have been two separate tracks at one time. One of them has been modernized and the other is now a long and very well set up  cycle track. We couldn’t work out why there had been two lines each with its own embankments and bridges. 

We followed the track on and off for a good way until the path diverged to the left, climbing up to skirt round a group of wind turbines on top of the hill. We could see that one of them was burnt out - according to my brother the result of a gearbox fire. 

Lunch was at another Fuente, under the shade of a maple tree. We spent a lazy hour there, resuming the walk with some reluctance. 

Some time after this we saw that the trees were no longer burnt and that there were more flowers and green undergrowth. We had come out of the fire damaged area around Bejís. It was a real relief to see the greenery and made us realise how depressing the burnt mountainsides were. We arrived at Mas de Noguera at about 17:30 and were shown to our simple room. Dinner is at 21:00 so we’ve a bit to wait.  

Edit: dinner was soup, square potato, sausages and artichokes, followed by homemade yoghurt and honey. Pretty healthy!

Andilla-Bejís

 Andilla - Bejís

Nestor has kindly given us a lift from  Valencia to Andilla. We stopped on the way to buy sandwiches in Lliria, before climbing up to Andilla. The day was overcast because of a massive cloud of dust from the Sahara which is covering the whole of the east of Spain. 

We said goodbye and set off from Andilla at about 10:30. Of course we started off in the wrong direction.

But quickly recovered and started climbing up a river course through almond trees to la fuente del señor, where a waterfall appears from the side of a rock face. A brief stop for airing our feet and then up again following the red and white flashes. At this point I thought we were going the wrong so we backtracked and went past a rock which accessible  via a rope bridge. In following the route past this we lost our way again and ended up scrabbling over overgrown terraces before we found the right path again. Uneventful after that until our lunch stop. The scenery all around us during the morning was pretty bleak because of the grey pall over everything but mainly because this area is very badly affected by the forest fires of 2022 which burnt vast swathes of trees. Everywhere there are burnt tree trunks, upright or leaning crazily over, along with piles of logs where works to clear the land are taking place. 

We went wrong again after lunch because I wasn’t paying attention and did another unexpected kilometre. But it was a better route than the one we should have taken, which went down a rocky and boulder strewn river bed for half a mile. 

We decided not to go up to Arteas de Arriba but instead take the road via Arteas de Abajo to Bejís. This was a good decision as it gave us a tremendous view of the extraordinary terracing on the steep slopes round the villages. An amazing amount of work over centuries to make a living from the land. 

We arrived in Bejís through the Roman aqueduct and made our way to the casa Fontana where we are staying for the night. Plain and simple accommodation but clean and comfortable. Some beers at the bar followed by a walk up to the castle and illegal entry to the top for a fantastic view to all the surrounding mountains and valleys. All still very grey and overcast.

We had a light supper in one of the bars which was great and then to bed. 

Aqui estamos de nuevo

 I’m back in Valencia to continue the walk along the GR7, this time with my brother. My excellent friend Nestor is taking us up to Andilla where I stopped the last time after the unfortunate incident with my friend’s feet. We’re about to set out now.