Middle-aged flash packers

St Bartolome circular hike – 9 miles. 500m ascent

The potent Sangria didn’t do my sleeping any good. I have slept like a baby this holiday but in one night it feels as though it’s all been undone.

I partly blame our new neighbours who have the world’s noisiest children. Our previous neighbours were heaven sent. French with two small children, we hardly  heard a peep from them and they gave us all their left over beer and food when they left.

This lot are from hell. Their children are a nightmare, screaming and clattering all over the place into the early hours. I can only hope  they have calmed down by tomorrow night as we may have to remonstrate in whatever language they speak or if necessary mime.

Of course, this was the one day we had to get up early as we were meeting our friends Helen and Graham for a hike in the Gran Canarian hills. They are staying up in the mountains so we decided to meet in the middle and spend the day together. 

The 45 minute multi hairpin bend drive to our meeting point was like something from the tv  program “World’s most dangerous roads”’ .

The views were both  amazing and frightening. The drive would have been bad enough without any traffic but there were cyclists everywhere and avoiding knocking them off their bikes was quite tricky. Hobbyist cyclists are the most foolhardy and stubborn people in my book. Armed with their go pros, no doubt they’ll catch some flighty car driver carrying out a dangerous manoeuvre but if you’re dead, it’s not going to help you much is it? As with all other men of Spanish descent , the local drivers have no mercy and will run you into the rocks and toot you as they go past. Why you want to play chicken with them is beyond me.

Anyway, we arrived in Bartolome in one piece only to find today was the day of some ultra endurance run so there was very little parking. This exact same thing happened when we were in Tenerife and we ended up hiking around the same route with about a hundred marathon runners! . Luckily both then and this time we were able to squeeze in at the allotted car park and meet our walking pals.

And what a great walk. We had a lot of weather – rain, sunshine, mist, cloud but the scenery was incredible. I wasn’t expecting the interior of Gran Canaria to be so majestic.  We crossed paths with various runners, some looking surprisingly fresh for the agonies they’d been through, others not. It all made for a great day. Definitely more exploring of this area to be done.

We stopped off at a cafe for coffees, cake and soup. All very nice and Steve got a shoulder massage from the owner thrown in! 

He needed it for the drive back, but the lack of cyclists made it a lot easier.

Last day tomorrow- flight is scheduled for 6pm. We also have a moderate coastal event warning. I’ve seen these on weather forecasts before but never experienced one. We’ll see what happens.