El Torcal

This really deserves to be seen at full scale.

First, a huge thank you for all the comments, stars and hearts for yesterday's Valentine's blip. You lot are such a wonderful bunch of old romantics! You're lovely. I can tell you that you had TJ blushing tonight when she saw herself sitting at the top of the spotlight. It's reasonably common knowledge here, although probably not known to newer folk here, that we met through blip just over a year ago. This really is a very special community of people. Kisses to you all from the two of us.

Working very hard in recent weeks I feel like I've deserved this little break. Spending so much time in my head recently has meant that most days have disappeared in a blur, the passage of time barely noticed. Now I'm enjoying quite the opposite experience. Writing this in the evening it scarcely seems possible that this is the same day that I woke up into this morning with breakfast on the terrace in warm sunshine. That feels like it was a couple of days ago.

It should be pretty obvious by now that I'm no longer in Ireland. I'm actually in Spain! We took a short drive from where we are staying at Valle de Abdalajis in Andalucia to the beautiful ancient town of Antequera. On seeing its dramatic setting I realised that I'd been here before on a cycling trip, although I had no time to explore on that occasion. We rectified that today with a wander around the streets and up the hill to the castle, which afforded amazing views of the rooftops and the distant mountains. After the recent freezing temperatures and grey weather in England it was an absolute delight to sit in the sun under the most intense blue skies with a coffee and a bocadillo.

After lunch we travelled on to El Torcal National Park. We had heard good things about this place but nothing could have prepared us for the breathtaking, almost surreal beauty of this high limestone plateau. It was so different to anything I had ever seen before that I didn't immediately register that this is Karst territory. If you know limestone pavement from England then this is the same but on a scale of a hundred times larger. The elements seem to have had much longer here to sculpt the rocks into the most fantastical and improbable shapes. If this is the work of God then He had a very good day here. There are many places in the world where you can only imagine He got a bit bored, but here He was in the zone for sure, creating with an extravagant flourish!

After walking the marked trail we decided to explore on our own - and we're so very glad we did. It wasn't busy anyway, but once away from the path we had only mountain goats for company. It was so much fun traversing this complex topography, climbing up and down and jumping across the fissures. We set out our stall to climb to the distant ridge you can see here, which seemed just about the highest point, and led by an intrepid TJ we did indeed do just that, with perfect timing as the sun was setting behind the far distant mountains.

It was then a bit of a dash back to the car in rapidly failing light. This would not be a good place to get benighted without a torch! We made it just in time. It was then a drive back to the villa, stopping off en route at the same lovely restaurant that we visited last night. We feel like locals already! I could easily have called it a day there but TJ wanted to sample the delights of the outside Jacuzzi. This was a new experience for me, soaking in hot water under the stars and with the nearby mountains silhouetted by moonlight, having one's muscles soothed by jets of water. This was as near to perfect a day as I could possibly imagine.