Penàguila

We had a choice of a 29 Km day or a 20 Km day. Though the 20 Km town, Ibi, looks like it would have been a nicer place to stay, we weren’t ready to stop since it was pretty early. We had already done the big elevation for the day, so it wasn’t much of an additional effort to go those extra 8 or 9 flat kilometers.

The first 20 kms this morning were wonderful. Up up up for about 800 m and then some great views. We had some fog at the beginning, but when it broke we could see the ocean and Alicante, about 25 miles away. There was also a pozo de nieve/pou de neve, where snow was brought from as far away as France (thanks Elaine) and stored till warmer months, when it served to refrigerate food. We were standing there enjoying the views when a Seat 600 came up. That was the only car in Spain in 1970 when I lived there and it brought back all sorts of memories. I took a 600 km trip as one of three people in the backseat. If you could see the size of the backseat, you would marvel.

When we got to Ibi, we went to the bar/restaurant recommended by Alan, the Cordobés. The place was closing because the town was in fiestas and they needed to prepare the place for their lunch guests. But when they saw that we were walking, and when they heard that Alan had been here in 2018, they cleared a space for us. Our waiter has been here since 2004 and is an avid hiker. He says he remembers Alan, but who knows. I took a picture.

We got to Onil around 2 pm. It’s a non-descript highway hotel but has a restaurant that was packed and booked out. We had a very good lunch, but now there is really nothing to do. That’s one of the disadvantages of a roadside hotel. There is a castle about 3,Km away but it is closed. So I have to contain myself with washing my clothes, doing my stretches, and hopefully having a few WhatsApp conversations with home.

The tracker function on my FindPenguins app seems to be going berserko, so, if you want to see what we’ve actually walked, the GPS tracks can be found on Wikiloc, peregrina2000.

https://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/spatialArtifact…Read more