Cacti, caldera, and buzzing blossom

We've had a fairly active day. It's only when you start to explore an area on foot that you realise that after just a few weeks of inactivity at home over Christmas our fitness levels have really deteriorated. Two short walks and we're wrecked!

This morning was a bit overcast and blustery. Nevertheless, undaunted, we decided to explore a path to the side of the camp site that wanders off into the hills across an area of protected flora. There were many species of Mediterranean shrub, small clumps of flowering plants, all of which were entirely unknown to us, mainly because the book I bought Gill for Christmas on Mediterranean flora may have been a rare and handsomely illustrated volume, but it was too weighty a tome to take with us on Monarch airlines as hand baggage.

Never mind, we had fun looking at the multi-coloured rocks and trying to figure-out the geology of what is clearly a seriously vulcanised landscape.

At first glance the path seemed nothing but a stony track through an equally stony, windswept scrub land...

but there was evidence of past human activity, and the rocks themselves were mixed in colour and type,

more recent evidence of homo sapiens - a hiker had built a small cairn - I woz' ere, it said.

small flowering plants among the rocks..

and bright orange lichen.

The hills themselves were strewn with small fist-sized rocks of all kinds of colours - red rocks. viridian green, bright blue and boring grey, I picked up one small stone that had all these colours mixed together. The range of different rocks and minerals seemed to us to be evidence of some huge volcanic explosion, or perhaps eons of more gradual volcanic activity millions of years ago. Though Gill has a grasp of geology, neither of us really has the specialist knowledge to make sense of what we found. Here's the handsome multi-coloured rock - I sense it will coming with us as a memento.

After this morning's geological triumph, we decided to continue in the same ilk this afternoon. Gill noticed an information sheet in the camp site reception about a walk up to a nearby caldera. So after lunch we headed up into the hills to se what we could find.

A sign to the village of  Las Presillas Bajas also had a National Park footpath marker to the Caldera de Majada Redonda. We began to climb up a long stony valley. The wind buffeted us, although the sign claimed the caldera was just 1 km. from the main road, it seemed longer.

The village itself was surrounded by half abandoned stone terraces, it seemed to specialise in the cultivation of prickly pears. By the look of it I think it must be a niche market, most of the plantations were overgrown.

The village itself was a pretty whitewashed hamlet on the side of the bare hillside. It was quiet, apart from one dog that barked suddenly from a raised courtyard, scaring the daylights out of us both.

Beyond the village the road petered out into a shingle track which snaked across the floor of the crater. The caldera was sheltered from the wind, much warmer than the open valley. Judging from the more luxuriant vegetation we suspected it had a micro-climate.

Swifts flitted across the flat grassy area that formed the lowest part of the crater. They seemed larger than those in the UK. We wondered if some species do not migrate, and are resident all year in southern Europe. As well as cacti and other succulents the sheltered caldera also supported flowering cherry bushes. The silence was such that you could hear the bees buzzing among the blossoms from fifty yards or more.

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We followed the path to the other side of the crater, but turned back before it climbed the cliff-like far side. While we were in the crater the sun broke through, and briefly it became tee shirt weather, but by the time we were walking back to the main road the stiff northerly breeze had returned. We were glad to get back to the van. I think both of us have a way to go fitness wise, but we're working on it!