Today was a lovely bright sunny day.  So time for a walk, this was a circular walk around a ridge of rock called The Bernia.  The Bernia overlooks the resorts of Altea and Benidorm, you get an excellent view of the ridge from the N70 motorway.  The walk is 8km and graded medium-high, has quite a bit of scrambling and walking on scree slopes.  For one reason or the other (ie Rosemary) it took us 5 hours and not the estimated 3.5 hours.

The walk starts up from a car park by a café and goes up a rough track passable by cars.  Off the track are several remote houses, and even the odd British caravan parked on a plot of land.  At the head of the track is a spring (water) filling station.  Seems the Spanish are into drinking natural spring water from the hills.  Here was a Brit, and an Austrian filling up their car with numerous 5 litre containers of water.

From now on the walk went into a narrow path, going up the hill until it reached the rock face.  Here we walked under the ridge slowly up the slope, clambering up quite a few steep patches, and even having to use the occasional assistance of ‘hands’.  At the North edge of The Bernia you take a natural tunnel under the rock face.  This tunnel is about 30 yards in length, and three feet high.  Passing through the tunnel, downwards, you enter out into a large cave overlooking the coast, Altea and Benidorm.  Short stop for our packed lunch, drink of water and Robin feed.  Despite the lovely day, the conditions were rather too hazy to get good pictures of Benidorm.

The walk now headed South West under the cliffs of The Bernia.  This part of the walk was mainly on the level, OK first going down hill a little and then up hill so that we could cross over The Bernia at the far end.  Some parts were a little tricky, again having occasionally to use the hands, crossing short scree slopes.  The Spanish also have a tendency to mark the path well where it was obvious, and then forget to mark it where the route divided into several possible tracks.

On the way we met one other walker walking the route in the opposite direction, who spoke to us in French and mysteriously suggested I slow down.  There was a herd of goats half way along the track, including two babies.

At the far end of The Bernia was a fort, a Bastion.  The fort still had a few intact arches.  Here the walk became easier as we crossed over the ridge, and then headed back down to meet up with our car.

Back at the Villa, Chef prepared a lovely chicken dish with some of the largest chicken breasts we

have ever seen.  Later in the evening we were entertained by one of the cats, Jake, drinking water out of the tap.