La excursión

A grand day out.

Describing a day out with the nicest of cowboys.

When you visit Spain why not get our help to explore the area described. We can help in various ways, either as part of a guided trip or using information we can provide.

Make a start by reading a little then contact us.

Its sounds a bit Wallace and Grommit, but the Spanish equivalent of "A grand day out" would be "Una excursión". First the phone call:

"Jeremy! vamos de excursión el jueves - vienes?"

My answer came quickly, to hide trepidation borne of other excursiones, but was always going to be,

"Yes of course I'll come, Thursday it is. What's the plan then?"

Silly question. To a group of Spaniards; a plan spoils the fun, and anyway it becomes rapidly extinct; but the 8am was clear and every thing else would evolve. A choice of walking or riding was on offer and I was a definite walker, or jogger, as I had found in the past, trying to keep up with the horses. Its great to be included, as new face in the village, only living here for 15 years, and a guiri to boot, any sign of acceptance is great news.

"No te preocupes, yo también ando" At least then, there would other walkers".

The idea was to take a stock of supplies to an outlying un-inhabited cortijo which could then function as a mountain refuge for we group of friends in the know. This was the reason for the horses, to carry all the stuff. Whilst we were at it though, there would be un almuerzo. We would cook lunch whilst at the cortijo and a fair bit of fare had to be taken for that. What was left would stay to stock the water-butt, I mean larder.

The cortijo is above the tree-line so one cowboy has been dispatched early to collect a horse load of wood and take it on up, for the cooking fire. So that was 1 man 2 horses and a clutch of dogs on their way. I call him a cowboy in the nicest sense. Many families here live by rearing cattle in the mountains and the only way to access the area and the cattle, is to do it on horse back or on foot, and so the vaquero, pack horse in tow, followed by his pack of dogs is a routine sight at dawn and dusk in the village streets. Dawn and dusk because, as is well known, REAL men do it very early and return from it ostentatiously late.

We are taking a gas hob, with 30 kilo gas bottle, as some important things, like coffee pots, don't lend themselves to fireplace cooking. Also a 100 litre water-butt with screw top is taken as a rat and fox proof larder for the cortijo. It's too big for the panniers, but bigger ones are found, and the larder filled with supplies, much of which seems to be in bottles labeled with the words "reserva", "Rioja", "ron" and "whisky", but also more humble brews in tins, wine skins, pop bottles and slim silver pocket flasks. There was meat, choto, ready chopped for stewing, chops for barbecuing, and cured meats, sausages and dried goods, for the larder. Everyone gradually arrived each with contributions for the refuge and dogs for the pack.

Making a start

It took a while but we were off at last, there was a surplus of horses and the walkers were all persuaded to ride, except me. I was teased, a guiri who didn't know any better, and wanted to walk, "!Ha!", and nagged all day to ride but relied on my "I know nuuuuurrthing" technique, "I'm from England".

"All these horses are all very calm you'll have no trouble." being the repeated comment, followed by long conversations of injuries and exceptions that didn't prove the rule. We had had a rampant horse incident in the village a few days before, in which, only by luck, no one was killed or injured, except the horse: 2 broken legs and a bullet in the head, a front door: split by falling horse, and a car: wing ploughed off. The horse became frightened by the plough, ran from field to stable, down narrow and fortunately empty streets, crashing into front doors, railings and finally the car before falling and breaking its legs. Imagine that on the insurance form. "well, your honour the car was parked, minding its own business, and a un-insured horse-drawn plough took the wing off." yes yes yes , next case.

I knew vaguely where we were going so it wouldn't matter if I got left behind. The white painted cortijo en la valle del rio Culo perro - "es la unica blanca".

Of we go then, 8 riders and a packhorse, 3 Antonios, a Miguel, a Juan, a Jose, "el Coronel", and with a certain amount of duplication, the cook, a chef, 2 hoteleros, a pair of cowboys and an on-foot-geery, not to forget the ubiquitous pack of dogs and, el panadero who would follow later.

There seemed to be two Coroneles who were also two of the Antonios and one of the cooks which explains a little why we don't add up. Eldest sons by tradition inherit forenames, they also inherit nicknames. 'Coronel' the elder returned from military service as a Sergeant and this was notable enough in the village for him to have been sarcastically promoted, missing out all intermediate ranks; his son didn't even have to be drafted.

It was essential to have with us los vaqueros. It was their cortijo and they have access to the meat from their own flocks. Also a good idea to invite the hotel owners who were happy to raid their cellars for magnums of vintage rioja. Obviously the cook and the chef might come in handy, as would the baker, who would gallop out later after the 11am baking and arrive in time for lunch with the bread still warm. It was less clear why the guiri was there, perhaps they wanted something to laugh at later, but my hope is that we are good friends and other guiris had cried off, perhaps they knew something, or didn't know nuuuurthing.

The early start ticked on to about 9.30 and no breakfast yet, only a grabbed 'café con leche' , perhaps we would stop en-route.

Horse jam

A narrow cobbled path heads out of the village gradually climbing through terraced land watered by many springs and acequias but before we are hardly started there's a hold up, a horse jam at the path-works. The cobbling of these paths has always been a community responsibility: some paths are the equivalent of a public footpath and the responsibility of the town hall, others linking village, farms, and pastures being maintained by those who use them. The routes lost their importance as trade routes, relatively recently, in the mid 20C., and since then nobody has cared for them. Considering the lack of care, the good solid cobbling has survived pretty well. Now there is more interest from the walking holiday industry, more job creation, more subsidy money, and it is quite common to see path work being undertaken, and also good to see it being done in the traditional way with mud, rock, sweat and blisters. Steeper sections of paths need cobbling to give grip to hooves and prevent rainwater washing the path into a gully.

The rock here is a mica schist, a sort of thick slate 5, 10 or 15 cms thick which is laid edge down, slightly off vertical, at a water shedding angle. It gives a deep rock base which is then covered in earth to stick it all together, bed it in, and make it comfortable whilst still being able to survive herds of passing cattle and commuting horse traffic. The path-works here are being done slowly, carefully and in a style we all know from workmen anywhere, 1 boss, 3 advisers, 6 watchers and a man who's turn it is to do something with a rock. Oh, and a mule and arrierro fetching rock as required. What came first, I wonder? The arriero or his urging arre!

It takes a good while to get through the road works. As each of us passes, the routine comments are repeated and the work admired, commented on, joked about and our excursion, on a work day, disparaged jealously.

There's a service station at the road works, a spring, that I had never used. I asked if it was good water.

"!Absolutely! Of the best. Look. Every horse stops here to drink even though they are not thirsty".

It's true. On outward journey and the return the horses all drank here, but ignored many other sources. To kill the moment while their mounts drink, a few hip-flasks come out,

"Yo de excursion en el campo, nunca bebo agua".

One of the Antonios it seems, has no faith in the horses opinion and lets me know that although the water is good and healthy, he won't use it in preference to his hip-flask potion. This is probably in jest but I have noticed a tendency for manual workers to carry and use wine and not water to get them through the day. Me, I go along with the horse as there are too many alcohol-hours left in the day to start yet-a-while.

The route

On up the path. Its a fast pace for me walking, and a slow one for the horses, walking. We are not going that far today, between 2 and 3 hours, but it is all uphill. 3 hours uphill does sound a bit beyond the normal stroll to the lunch club, but here, it seems normal and worthwhile, for the food, for the countryside, and for the company.

The village is claimed to be the highest in Spain and crawls up the hillside between 1400 to 1550 metres above sea level; higher than Ben Nevis but still less than half the altitude of the nearby peak of Mulhacén at 3482m. A fit, but slow old geezer, like me would take more than a day to walk up to the peak and for this reason it is good to included in this private refuge club in case one day I, or one of the clients, cant make it the whole way up or down.

At about about 1900m we reach "la lapida", where I had been warned to turn off the main path and follow the shoulder of the hill up more steeply. The main path reaches a high point here and begins to descend into a tributary valley, the Culo Perro. The plaque is cemented into the cliff and the inscription commemorates two Guardia Civil killed in the execution of their duty, "defending king and country", "killed by bandits in 1957". Actually it doesnt say "king" because there wasn't one then, but that is the sense. No one is aware of Spain having enemies threatening king and country in 1957 but perhaps the regime and the Guardia were then paranoid enough, and hated enough for them to feel threatened. I listened to my fellow excursionistas who still found it an interesting topic. In nearly every village throughout Spain there is still "el cuartel", the barracks, where, in the post civil war period, Guardia were billeted and charged with keeping the local area subjugated. They were never recruited from the local area and were moved about year on year. Now, 80 years later the buildings are still there fulfilling a police station role, but in 1957 the Guardia would have been a law unto themselves. In our village at that time the Guardia role is said to have been one of rape and pillage rather than defence and peace keeping. It seems that the cortijeros then living in outlying farms like our refuge, had reached the limit of their tolerance and to put a stop to the extortion and abuse they mounted an ambush at this point. "Un-named", "un-known" bandalleros, hiding "over there", shot and killed the two who went tumbling down the cliff, "here". The events it seems have been passed down in detail from the preceding generation. The defaced lapida is not well respected among the villagers, bandelleros implies outside the law, and they were, according to today's version, acting in the public interest, Robin Hoods in Andalucia.Over the shoulder of the hill now, looking northwest up the tributary valley of the Culo Perro the sudden change of view is a nice shock. Distant, more open, and capped by the Sierra Nevada ridge with a new, clean topping of November snow, sunlit and contrasting against a perfectly clear blue sky. It's not hot though. Only the exertion of fast uphill walking is keeping the chill air at bay. The air is thinning too, once above 2000m my lungs start to struggle a bit to bring in the oxygen and the body has to slow accordingly. Its not far now though and a white painted cortijo which must be our target is in sight not too far above. I can afford to let the cavalry go ahead. I caught up at the river crossing where horses drank and a gate had to be opened. This river which is easily crossed, with barely a wet boot today in November, empties out of a hanging valley know as "Las siete Lagunas" where 7 tarns sit on a glaciated plateau. Whenever nighttime temperatures are freezing, there is no trouble crossing, but earlier in the year when much lying snow is thawing fast, the Culo Perro boils and cascades steeply down the valley defying attempts to cross it. Many metres of snow mount up in the hanging valley during Winter, and the thaw is a very long process throughout Spring and Summer, the snow melting a few millimetres per day. In late May and June high temperatures and extensive snow fields combine to cause water to come thrashing down the waterfalls and make the river un-crossable. In early summer, the masochistic can swim with the icebergs in the tarns and if they survive that, take freezing showers in the waterfall downstream near our cortijo.

Arrival

The lie of the land is steep for the last few hundred metres, hiding the cortijo, but it suddenly appears against the blue, with the firewood cowboy proudly standing guard, with a where-have-you-lot-been attitude.

As soon as the packs and saddles were off and the goods stashed, I rushed for a well overdue breakfast. Taking the initiative I unloaded a tortilla and a bota of local plonk onto the thoughtfully provided plastic-sack table cloth and served up. This filled the gap whilst other goodies were being unpacked: pan, salchichon, panceta, higos secos, botas were raised, and beer cans fizzed. Alcohol to accompany breakfast is a normal concept here.

The fire had been lit as a priority and even as breakfast was demolished the cook began preparing it to cook the garlicky kid. Our timing had gone a bit wrong: with the days being short, we should have arrived earlier, now we have only about 4 hours left to fit in breakfast and lunch, and get back before dark. Oh well, we can but try.Breakfast washed down quite well with the Vino costa from the bota but it wasn't long before the vintage stuff was opened, nice wine, shame about the tin mugs. I enjoyed breakfast hugely: a bit of this and that eaten off the knife, with hunger, good spirits, and the satisfaction of having arrived all being important ingredients. There were some great bits and pieces to savour: somebody's home made salchichon sausage went down well with me and although the Panceta looks awful I know from experience its worth suspending the suspicion of fat to get to the taste. A slice of the panceta fat on bread, spreads like a meat flavoured butter. The cortijo is quite bare, obviously not lived in, and from the conversation it seems that it was a total ruin, but rebuilt a few years ago and not yet put to use. These buildings take very little time to dissolve, ashes to ashes, if they are not maintained. This one is rebuilt in the typical style, using the materials of old, stone and earth walls with horizontal chestnut tree poles supporting the flat, slate and earth roof. The design is borne of necessity more than logic, with materials available from within reach and suitable for a self-build project.

The picture below is that of a neighboring cowboy, similar cortijo but more lived in. You can only place a limited amount of faith in the waterproofing qualities of earth. Usually available is a soft, powdery mineral called launa which is easily excavated from where it crops out of the terrain and breaks down into a very fine powder with clay-like waterproofing qualities. A thin layer of launa on top of a deep earth sponge, is used to waterproof the Alpujarran flat rooves. On a well maintained roof it is very effective, but the owner has to keep an eye open for rat holes etc. and add more launa periodically, to replace that washed off by rains. In the Culo Perro there is no local launa and the result shows, as thawing roof soil begins to drip onto the breakfast table. It is easily solved with a "No pasa nada", the normal response to a problem you can't solve or want to ignore; the drip drips, so we move the food to one side, solved.

Who's got the bread?

The real problem of the moment is that the Choto is done, and the magnum downed, but el Panadero hasn't turned up yet with the bread. Bread is really helpful when eating from a communal pot with your pocket knife and no plates. The cortijo is smoke filled from the cooking fire so nipping out to scan the horizon for the approaching bread man is a popular respite, each of us taking turns to relay the "not yet" news and to get the smoke from eyes and lungs. There were going to have to be chimney modifications some time.

A horse did finally come over the brow but without a rider, which leeds to a bit of ribaldry about the riding skill of the panadero.

"No importa el jinete". ¿Lleva pan?"

There were in fact 2 horses and one did carry the panadero and with the binoculars........

"yep and the bread". The 2nd horse was a foal just out for company and training.

So there we were, the lunch wasn't burned, the bread arrived, and wine remained. The large paella was taken off the trivet and placed in the middle of the floor and we arranged ourselves on chairs, buckets, a stone bench, a pile of firewood, anywhere within finger reach of the trough. It was great, but as favourite dish, choto is not normally uppermost in my mind. It's the sauce, trimmings and provenance of the kid that that make it worth while today, the whole cloves of garlic stewed to sweetness, orejones of tomato, imparting a marmite flavour, all mixed with a hint of wood-smoke, and the all important bread to dunk.

There is quite an etiquette to eating from a communal pot: you have to imagine your segment, and eat from within in its invisible boundaries without contaminating other segments with your knife, which may after all, have last seen service doing something awful to a sheep. No stabbing all the good bits from the other side of the pot either. No problem with this dish, but you should try it with custard! There is more than enough without stealing from other segments, and though the scatter of gnawed bones on the floor around us grows, there is still plenty left in the pot. The dogs will eventually get their reward.

There was coffee. Not your typical nescaf, we had come prepared with on-the-hob expressso pots and our favourite coffee blend freshly ground and vacuum packed. We (1 wine too many is making me feel included) may be cowboys but we don't botch a meal with rubbish coffee. Our coffee chef today is Miguel and he names the coffee. "Carajillo de ron del rio Seco".

A coffee recipe

• Make the coffee (this is the short version of the article) and put to one side.
• Take a saucepan, or individual tin mug, that you don't mind spoiling.
• Throw in a random amount of brown sugar (cubes).
• Heat the sugar to melt and begin to caramelise and don't worry if toffee sets on the pan sides.
• Add the coffee, swirl around and reheat so that the sugar and toffee dissolve into the hot coffee.
• Throw in a generous quantity of rum. I said generous, double that.
• Whilst still on the heat put a match to the vapour in the pan and scorch your hair as the flames rise up.
• Let it burn out and serve. Alcohol lovers can blow it out sooner or add more rum in the cup.
• Boiling water in the empty pan restores it to as good as new.

The coffee has a coffee flavour..... with rum and toffee undertones and was more than good: AND, the panadero found a dunking big slab of sponge cake in his saddle bags. So out come the knives again, for more, highly refined, slicing, stabbing and sharing with the little finger raised.

"¿otra copa coronel? .....just the one then....the chat volume gradually fades.... and.... stops.... .....siesta time....

The return

But we had to start back by 4.30 at the latest in order to get home before dark. No pasa nada, we know the route, so do the horses, so what if the mist is all around us. El Coronel, with a silent hint began to wash up under the hose leading from a high-up spring. A sign that maybe it was time to stop snoozing, and fade up the chatting. WE Spanish cowboys have a infinite capacity for chatting, probably on the same topic as yesterday or even this morning or, an hour ago but chat we will.

Preparing for the return, burning rubbish, catching horses, loading rubbish, sweeping and mopping the bones and debris from the slate floor, catching the horses again, was casually achieved; we might be a load of vaqueros but so long as no one is watching, we can be as house proud as she indoors. The horses had met up on the hill with some wilder roaming friends and did not want to leave. Re-catching them in the thickening mist was eventually achieved, and a lull in the chat provided the moment to start back down into the mist.

Our fledgling refuge was left cleaned, supplied and un-locked, ready for use at some time in the future. We were not to know but tomorrow the weather would turn, leaving the cortijo covered with snow, so we were just in time. That's the Spanish way, in time is soon enough, and late is too late to worry. "No pasa nada"

The Sun had now set behind Mulhacén and the temperature down to the hat and glove level, and I was glad to have hoof tracks to follow through the mist until we returned to La Lapida where I was back on familiar territory. It was a fast pace down, and on eroded stony paths I was glad of the knee-saving poles I habitually use. Night was falling as we neared the village and rested on an era, arrangements were made regarding tomando algo, and the party began to split up towards their various stables, with the proviso that we would meet in "El celemin" to partake of a little something.

We had failed the target of starting at dawn but like real men, we returned after dark, looking as though we'd done a days work on the hill.

So, into Bar Celemin for a well deserved little "algo".

The bar photo is a bit fuzzy for some reason.

November, 2010