A walk in the rio

I heard a few weeks after moving to Spain about a walk where you follow a river, the Rio Chillar, upstream, as far as you want, and continually pass by beautiful waterfalls and pools. Places where crowds of people would stop in the middle of their walk and take a dip, cooling down in refreshing cold and clean water.
I didn't get chance to do that walk although it's top of my list come Spring 2009.

My weekends walk did take me to the Rio Chillar, although it was more of a glimpse at it then a walk down it.


*Although the distance shown comes in at a little under 8.5km this doesn't include the 5km walk I do to and from the bus stop.
Speaking of which, the best thing about all of these walks I am doing is they are a 5 minute bus ride away from my house.


Sun in the trees
It was another lovely day for walking at the weekend.
I was told on my last walk that there is apparently 20 days of rain per year in this area, meaning there is very little chance that you will have a walk and have bad weather.
(Although I understand some bad weather is currently being blown from north Spain and parts of Malaga are on a Rain Warning.


Green hills
Despite all the sun there is lots of green in the hills around here thanks to regular sea mists which help "water" the area daily.


The Group
Despite this walk being classed as a medium difficulty I thought a lot of the walk was a little past the group averages abilities. That always worries me, espeically when you are walking close to the edges of mountains.


Rio Chillar from above
As we walked down the side of the hill towards the Rio Chillar there was a lot of slipping. Due to the large amount loose stones under foot there was someone slipping almost everyone metre or two.

But we finally reached the river.

Start of the Rio Chillar
Although it was just a trickle where we crossed it.

But I did find an example of one of the pools

Small pool
And even on a warm Autumn (it is still autumn right?) day it looked refreshing. But I'm guessing it was freezing.


Wet doggy
Although there is one person who knows how cold the water is. But it doesn't look like he is letting it bother him.


More houses
And we didn't miss out on seeing houses on this walk either. Except this one is a little more upmarket then the caves from last time.


Hard work
After a bit of difficulty getting back up the hill (and scarey at times) from the river we finally started to make it home, alsnog some rather strangley cut roads in the side of the mountain.

And here are some much better panoramas (this time) thanks to Microsofts ICE, which I highly recommend, especially if you want to manually stitch your photos.






Bigger slide show here

I did get quite a bit more from this walk. I now know a few extra walks, I've seen a path near the rio that leads to Frigiliana, which isn't far from where we live (and somewhere where we almost deciding on living).
Plus I found out that people and families are still barbequeing up in the parks even this late in the year. If the weather stays like this I might try and persuade the missus family to go for a barbeque when they visit over Christmas. That'd be a first for everyone.
Plus next month is the walk I've been looking forward to. The one up the big proper mountain.