A walking break in lonely Spain

Lazily drifting in the updraft, the vultures swung past so close that we could hear the wind hissing through the distinctive fringe of wing feathers. Below, the gorge dropped 500 feet sheer, and beyond, the massif of the Sierra de Serrella stretched to the distant misty horizon. “The griffon vultures have been re-established here”, said Oscar Juna, my guide, shielding his eye against the sun. “Pesticides and hunting wiped them out - it’s good to see them here again.”

I had come to Spain two days before, driving up from the sprawl of Alicante on a warm March evening into the high hills of the Sierra de Serrella in southern Valencia. My destination was the village of Quatretondeta, some 50 miles inland and for fifteen years the home of Brian and Pat Fagg. Keen walkers, they had bought a house in the village in 1991, which they now run as Hotel Els Frares, a base for activity holidays.

Next morning over breakfast Brian told me about his adoptive home. “About 150 people live in the village here and the average age is 60”, he said smiling. “But they have been friendly and welcomed us from day one.”

I would be walking with Gary Hodgson, a guide and survival expert, more used, he said, to the cold of Cairngorms than the balmy spring of the Sierra. As we set off elderly villagers gathered around the baker’s van in Quatretondeta’s tiny square beamed and wished us a good day in the hills.

We started in the nearby village of Fomarca climbing steeply through olive groves and stone walled terraces which lined the hillsides as far as the eye could see. Built by Arab masons and farmers who had settled here from the 9th century, most now were unused and overgrown, stretching away like faded contour lines on a map. The scent of thyme filled the air and wild orchids, cowslips and other flowers grew in fragrant profusion beside the path. Beyond the last terrace, a gully with lush green grass led to the rolling high sierra of gorse and clumps of spiky broom which the locals called ‘nuns pillows’. “There’s a spring here...” said Gary, “.. and where’s there’s water you’ll find the Moors will have settled”.

In the centre stood an ancient nevera - a wide stone lined chamber where snow layered in straw would have been packed to last throughout the summer. The roof had collapsed , but the walls stood as firm as when they were built some 800 years ago, a testimony to the skill of the Arab masons. “Historians think that some of the snow from here was actually taken by ship to North Africa from the ports along the Costa Blanca.” said Gary. ” ...it’s difficult to imagine it lasting that long.”

We lunched on serrano ham and sheep’s cheese at 1300 metres on the Pico de Serrella, one of the highest of the Serrella massif, looking down over deep valleys to the sea and the distant mass of Benidorm. Barely fifty miles away from the teeming coastal strip, the hills here are rarely visited. “I hardly see other walkers,” Gary said as we picked our way off the ridge. “And if I do they’re usually local people... no tourists stray up into the Sierra”. Just below, in the graceful sweeping valley of Baranc de la Canal we found another nevera, and followed the same zigzagging mule track used by the Moors to convey their dripping cargo down to the stifling coastal cities in the dead of night. As church bells rang for evening mass our walk finished with a delicious cold beer in the tiny village bar of Formaca.

Next day I awoke to flawless blue skies and the sounds of nightingales singing in the cherry orchards below the hotel. Oscar Juna, a local man, joined us that day on a walk to another part of the Serrella massif, scrambling up a steep track to the ruined castle of Benisilli, perched high above the junction of two strategic valleys. Built by the Arabs, and then refortified by Christians, the castle was part a chain of watchtowers to warn the inland towns of invaders coming from the coast.

Heading over the rough craggy col of grey limestone, where swallows swooped close to our heads we came to a steep valley and followed the path down through terraced olive groves to the village of Alcal? de la Jovada, scene of the final violent defeat of the Muslims by Christians knights. Not far from the palace walls where Al Azraq, the last Arab leader made his ill fated last stand in 1276, we ate an excellent lunch of albondigas and octopus with a litre of good local wine, before heading out into the heat of the afternoon. Here, just outside the village is the most intact nevera of the Sierra, and we shivered in the echoing dark chamber 30 metres deep beneath a ceiling domed like a mosque. Outside, Oscar led the way up a muleteers track over one more pass before descending through scented orange groves, the fruit cool and succulent in the warm afternoon sun.

On my last day I drove with Oscar to the Sierra Mariola 30 kilometres from Quatretondeta to enter the dark gorge of Barranca del Cint. Climbing up through pinewoods, the path circled back to a high plateau at the edge of the gorge. Craning over, Oscar pointed out the roosting vultures, like untidy bundles perched below on ledges. Some of the birds fly a round trip of 300 kilometres from their distant territories in other sierra for a weekly feed of fresh meat supplied here by a local company. As a group of twenty or so swept past eyeballing us hopefully, I sensed a strange kindred spirit.

Need to know

Nick Haslam travelled c/o of British Airways who operate two flights a day to Alicante from London Gatwick with return fares starting from £59 including taxes. For more details visit www.ba.com or call 0870 850 9850

Hotel Els Frares (Avenida Pais Valencia 20, 03811 Quatretondeta, Ailcante, Spain, tel: +34 96551 1234; email: elsfrares@terra.es; www.mountainwalks.com) will organise guided walks or information for guests about the network of paths throughout the Sierra de Serrella.