Pitres: Cortijo Prado Toro

For the second day in a row, we learned a new word in Spanish: Prado, which means meadow. Beautiful meadows flow down the hillsides here in front of old cortijos. The particular prado we were interested in today was Cortijo Prado Toro, a collection of houses in a complex designed by Donald Gray. Every time we look at the map picking out our hike for the day, we see that tempting label situated on the mountain side just above us. Finding a trail on Wikiloc to access it proved elusive. Given the number of locked gates we have encountered, added to the fact that the houses are now viviendas rurales, I wondered if we’d work our way up to them only to find that our way out was blocked by a locked gate.

We took a chance and started out on the GR 7 again, working our way up to the cortijo. As on other days when we’ve been walking in this area, we noticed many white streamers hanging from trees. We guessed that they were markers for the sort of mountain races that we have seen in other areas of Andalucia and wondered when the race had taken place. A few minutes later when three runners dashed by us, we realized that the race was taking place today! It is called the XX Leguas, and began in Pampaneira (where we were last week). The longest portion of the race covers 100 km through 23 villages in the Alpujarra! There are also shorter races of 9 km and 15 km. If you can’t do the whole hundred kilometers by yourself, you can enter as a team of three with each person running 33 1/3 km. I watched the runners pass by us in awe since I was struggling mightily to go up the steep slope at a crawling pace, much less running.

Happily, there was no locked gate at Cortijo Prado Toro. We returned via the same wide, well-graded forest road that we used several days ago to get to the snowy mountain overlook at Peña del Ángel. It was a quick descent, and we were back in time for lunch.Read more