Albarracin

We are parked up 2 miles from Albarracin in the Serrania de Cuenca. The landscape is rolling hills with dark red sandstone cliffs and boulders intermingled around a sparse pine forest. The pine trees are of the large needle variety with huge pine cones that litter the floor with the lavender bushes giving the forest a pine and lavender scent. The snow which had covered the forest for the past few days is slowly disappearing and all around us in the sound of song birds, no other animal life is visible, but the numerous tracks around our van suggest a lot goes unseen at night whilst we’re sleeping.

During the week we are virtually undisturbed except for a few other climbers and the odd tourist bus which comes to see the Stone Age paintings in some of the caves. We’ve stopped to look at a few, although very hard to see when found they are of amazing detail and complexity and not the simple line drawing I expected.

The town of Alarracin is the epitome of Spanish Medieval heritage. Originally a tiny Islamic state from 1012 to 1104AD, then an independent Christian kingdom 1170 to 1285AD it sits nestled high on the cliffs, houses perched on top of each cliff, tiny cobbled streets and stairs with houses cascading above you. Towering city walls surround the town and brightly painted cathedral spires dominate the centre. Unusually for a Spanish town the centre is completely intact, nothing seems to suggest the encroachment of modern life except a few cars and the odd washing line. New buildings are kept away from the walled city and you feel as if you could be walking through a city as it was five hundred years ago.

Having spent a morning exploring Albarracin we are now enjoying the afternoon sun and quite of the forest. There is little else to do here, a bar in town is recommended for climbers in the evening and the local campsite has free internet, although rather un-sportingly our request to buy a shower was turned down as they are only for campers and we where then charged when we tried to fill up our 25ltr water container. We will return for the free internet, but won’t be recommending the campsite to anyone else.

The climbing is often on steep roofs and walls, using pockets, sharp edges and sloppers, often some of the holds feel very fragile under your grip and there are frequent scars in the rock where holds have snapped. The problems are often dynamic and very athletic, although the problems are first class the rock is not of the same quality as Font and is unlikely to last with the amount of traffic it currently gets. Often when your grip fails you get a puff of sand ripping off the rock, suggesting its fragile nature. You almost feel selfish enjoying a rock which you know future climbers will not be able to enjoy in the same way. But hopefully with respect from the locals it will last.

Cheese, Pate, Pastries and Wine

Travelling in France has mixed blessings, after the bustle of English roads driving is very sedentary. You never seem to encounter traffic jams, everyone actually seems to be able to drive and when you stop at a service station the food is actually edible. The food is almost always interesting and different; I can’t recall seeing a single McDonalds or Burger King. Maybe it is this which prevents hoards of Brits descending on the country. The restaurant opening times are a bit haphazard, they seem to open and close when ever suites the owner. Finding only the one restaurant out of a high street of six restaurants open on a Friday night was bizarre and to compound this, the restaurant was a kebab house. I had been fully kebabed out for the year in Turkey and this was the last meal I wanted.

The Forest of Fontainebleau

The purpose of our trip was to avoid the usual bank holiday rain in England and enjoy the sun and sandstone bouldering of Fontainebleau. The vast forests surrounding the Royal palace of Fontainebleau where the hunting grounds for the Kings of France, well they where till they chopped their heads off. Within the maize of tracks and paths lies mountains of sandstone boulders, deposited their by some geological phenomenon. Each area has marked routes going up and down the boulders linking them together, providing a training ground for mountaineers from Paris going to the Alps. Each circuit is marked with a different colour, usually yellow the easiest, then orange, blue, red and finally white or Black. With each boulder typically being between three to five metres high and around fifty problems in a circuit you can quickly climb many hundred metres in a day. Or alternatively as I did just choice the problems which look the most fun and play about on them.

Me, about to fall off the last moves of this problem

When you are not bouldering you are usually either eating or drinking, the reputation of French cheese needs little introduction and this combined with some Pate and an ample supply of French bread usually ensures any calories lost climbing are quickly replaced at lunch. After climbing, just in case we hadn’t eaten enough for lunch the Patisserie’s offer such a vast array of sweet pastries with cream and chocolate in them that you are guaranteed not to lose any weight on a trip out here. If you are lucky after a day of Cheese, Pate, Bread and Pastries you might find room for the evening meal, which is never going to be light.

Yvette, enjoying one of the steep problems

After all this it is a relief to be back in control of my meals, but am coming to realise this summer’s trip around Europe might not be a very slim one.