It started with looking for an alternative to the family gathering we had in our minds to celebrate my 50th and ended with 51,2 miles and 3 fabulous days of walking.
Via verdes are disused railway lines, scattered across the country (there are 3.100 kilometres of them all over Spain). Luckily for us there is one in the north of our region which just happens to be 78km long known as the via verde noroeste – roughly 50 miles for us to walk and all without leaving our region (which until 2 weeks before my birthday was still not allowed).
Also luckily, my birthday fell on a Friday, my friend Paula lives in the region and doesn’t work on Fridays (we needed 3 days to complete the trail) and was well up for the challenge. So – the stage was set !
I found us accomodation on the route – the Friday night, was a rural hotel off the trail, but since we were joined by Nigel and Ian we had transport to get us there. The Saturday night was a hotel a kilometer or so off the trail in Bullas. Everything was booked and thankfully there were no more lockdowns to contend with.
We got up early for the big day – I opened a lot of cards and gifts (thank you once again everyone) before we set off from home at 8am on a rather damp morning. We arrived at the start of the trail which is in the heart of Murcia University Campus in time for an all important coffee – in the rain ! Just as we started walking it stopped raining and we had a dry and cloudy day – perfect for walking.
The first part of the trail is fairly urban, walking through houses on the outskirts of Murcia city. Our first tunnel appeared after only about half an hour, just a short one but a taste of things to come – every step of the way was where trains once took people.
It didn’t seem like long before we reached Molina de Segura where we really were walking through the outskirts of the town, we came upon our first old railway station, the first of many – we also came across a fabulous cactus garden which was the garden to a country house on our way out of the town. We crossed a metal architectural bridge over the river segura which was in full flow at the time, unlike some of our subsequent crossings which might once have been for rivers but now are more for dry river beds.
Out of Molina de Segura and walking into more open countryside on the way to Mula, we had to cross the real railway via a bridge but we didn’t see any trains – we weren’t sure if it was a line that’s in use or not. It was very soon time for a break and for us get our snacks out – excitingly I had been sent Kendal mintcake and Chunky Kitkats all the way from the UK and just in case the sun came out my first snack had to be the kitkat. Paula’s snack of choice is always savoury but no less exciting since she pulled out a packet of pork pies !!! We really enjoyed that break.
The route is very well signposted with plenty of updates about how far there is still to go in distances between places. We kept coming upon the old stations too – very few of which seem to be actually used for anything which is a great shame really. They are fantastic buildings and if they aren’t restored I can’t see how they will survive. They would make a great rest stop for people following the trail, although once we had left Molina de Segura behind us we really didn’t see anyone on the trail at all. I think we were certainly the only ones taking on the via verde over the course of the weekend.
As the day progressed we started to get into much wider expanses of open countryside and crossed our first viaduct. The nature of being on the via verde is that sometimes you cross viaducts without knowing how spectacular they are but once or twice it’s possible to see them on the approach which is great. In the valleys below there is almost always some sort of agriculture, usually fruit trees. Amazingly we also found a fig tree with fresh figs that we picked and ate whilst walking (amazing because we wouldn’t expect them to be ripe so early in the year which was a nice surprise)
As we reached the end of the day the sun came out which mean’t that we were waiting for our pick up in the sunshine after all the cloud of the day. We were very, very happy to reach the hotel molino de felipe where we could remove our shoes and air our extremely hot feet! We had achieved 33km which was further than anticipated thanks to us looking for a good place to be found by Nigel and Ian (it still took them a while to find us, technology can be a challenge, can’t it ?!?). We had an apartment overlooking the swimming pool at the hotel which was lovely but as described, very rural ! We rang at 6:30 to get pizzas delivered as suggested by the hotel but ridiculously 9pm was the earliest timeslot – knowing we would be very sleepy by then, and being really hungry we declined that offer and asked the hotel to make us some dinner. That’s how I came to have egg and chips for tea on my 50th birthday !! They were delicious, the best fried eggs I have had in a very long time. They came following a more traditional starter of ham, cheese, olives, almonds, tomatoes and smoked tuna and were followed by watermelon. It was all the perfect end to a fabulous day 1.
Breakfast was a bit more organised and we enjoyed bread and biscuits made from the flour milled at the hotel’s own mill, fresh orange juice, homemade jam and we even arranged a takeaway of ham and cheese ready for our morning snack stop. We were saying goodbye to Nigel and Ian that morning so we had our backpacks fully loaded ready for our overnight stop – we were under our own steam for the remaining kilometres to Caravaca de la Cruz where we would finish on the Sunday.
We were dropped off exactly where we finished the day before in order that we didn’t miss a single step of the route, even though it would have been much easier for Ian to pull into a layby a few hundred metres along the track! It was strangely liberating walking along with our lives on our backs (although we weren’t exactly carrying tents and full expedition kit like I used to do many years ago)
As we came to Mula something strange happened – we saw people, lots of people, some of them clearly locals out for their saturday morning stroll but the vast majority fruit pickers – carrying crates from one picking orchard to another. It was the equivalent of a traffic jam for this little stretch of footpath. Interesting to see but we were very happy when we had the trail to ourselves once again. Today was a day of lemons and apricots, both of which we harvested in very small quantities. The lemons were for later (if you haven’t tried hot water with fresh lemons as a night cap, give it a go), the apricots of course we ate as we walked, a great snack on the go. This was also a day of blue skies and sunshine so it was time for the factor 50, sun hats and searching for shady places to have our snack stops.
As well as all the fruit we also saw lovely flowers, all in bloom, we have had quite a lot of rain this month which must have helped and some of them were simply stunning.
To finish the day we walked along a part of the trail we had previously cycled – when we stayed for a weekend in Bullas a few years ago. It was a gentle incline (don’t tell Nigel) all the way with a lovely viaduct and a longer tunnel too – a shady spot for a snack.
As I said earlier, the trail is really well sign posted and we finished our day on the outskirts of Bullas – the only place on the route where we didn’t see the old railway station still in existence. We had to go off the route in order to find out hotel and this was our only route failure in the three days when we walked an extra half a kilometer by going a very circuitous route round the town to get to the hotel. Luckily we got our bearings and we easily able to get back to our start/finish point the next morning. The hotel was modern and friendly and we must have looked quite a sight as we stood stretching our legs whilst we waited to be checked in and get our room key. We hobbled to the bar and got ourselves a cold beer and water before we even went to the room. We had walked 24 kilometers and were there by 3 o’clock so plenty of time to rest our weary legs and check out some impressive blisters. We didn’t have far to go for our evening meal – back down the stairs (although by that point they were quite challenging to my stiff legs) and the chef made us various dishes that were filling and delicious including a smoked salmon gazpacho, filled puff pastry and tempura prawns, a delicious end to day 2.
Day 3, our final day, saw us heading towards Caravaca de la Cruz which is a pilgrim route as well as the via verde. I imagine it would be much busier at times of religious festivals when people are following the trail to celebrate mass at Caravaca. This morning, being Sunday, the trail was indeed busier, mainly with cyclists – which can be a bit off putting for the walker as they come whizzing past at great speed. It was nice to see some families out enjoying the trail too even tiny tots on bikes and parents with all-terrain pushchairs. Having said all that, we were still alone on many stretches of the route and we didn’t see anyone else carrying backpacks!! On day 1 we had seen lots and lots of rabbits, on day 2 lots and lots of butterflies, today we saw a snake and we thought – oh no – not a day with lots of snakes but actually we only saw the one, then lots of lizards. Today we had some woods to walk through and parts of the trail that were deep in the old railway cuttings.
Today was hazy and hot and we were certainly in need of our hats to keep the sun off, we saw some spectacular scenery on the way towards Cehegin and finally Caravaca. We had dressed our blisters well in the morning and we weren’t suffering too badly other than stiff calves in my case.
As we came toward Cehegin we knew we were almost at the end of our trail, we realised that we had walked through some really quite changing scenery over the 3 days, starting in the urban outskirts of Murcia and Molina de Segura, moving through the agricultural lemon, apricot and plum orchards towards Mula and Bullas where we saw olives and almonds plus the odd vineyard. Finally we saw the towns of Cehegin and Caravaca from a distance and also much more mountainous terrain with stunning views.
The old railway station at Cehegin is the only one we saw that seems to have been reonvated into houses and it is spectacular – an internet search back at home told me that it is actually holiday acommodation so that is definitely on my list for a future stay – it looks brilliant. We were quite sad as we approached our last tunnel and we started to get into the outskirts of Caravaca – and those last few kilometers into the town were still interesting since we came upon a heard of goats just grazing between the road and the trail.
All too soon we rounded a corner and saw the railway station at the end of our trip – Nigel and Ian were there waiting for us smiling away and we were finished!! Another 24,9km walked on the final day, no worse for wear other than a couple of blisters and extremely stiff calves – huge smiles on our faces and a pact to do more walks like this in the future. The via verde itself is to be recommended for everyone, it is a great trail, well maintained – the stations are all on the very outskirts of the towns so a coffee/beer break would be a detour from the route (as you know, we carried our snacks) which would also be brilliant to do on a mountain bike. Over the 3 days, the lovely Paula and I covered 78km of via verde only 3,022km to go !!
The Adventures of Gemini J 