Not a JCB in Sight–How Did They Do It?

Thursday 15th February 2018

We left the Camper Parking early, after emptying down and filling up with water. Thanks again Antequera for providing such a good facility for us. We are intending to spend a few days by a lake and on a deserted beach we know of so need to fill up with gas (LPG) as we changed over to the second bottle last night. Our database on our Autoroute tells us that there is one not far from our destination this morning, which thankfully it was. So being filled up with water, fuel & LPG we were set for about a week.

On to our stop today; The Antequera Dolmens (GPS: N37.0234215, W4.5470537). There are three very intact Dolmens two on this site and a third with a different kind of structure on another site 4km away. The sites are very accessible with free parking even for a large motorhome and free entry.

We have Dolmens near to our house in France but they in no way prepared us for what we saw today.  We were first treated to an impressively realistic animation of how people without metal tools, just bone, wood, rock and manpower, transported enormous rocks  some 6mt x 2mt x 1mt which must weigh many tons. Raised some to form walls and pillars and then placed the largest on top. A feat of engineering which would be challenging even with the earth moving equipment we have today. Even how they dug a 1.5mt x 19.5mt deep, vertical shaft down through solid rock with such tools defies belief.

I will not go into the detail about these marvels, but leave it to you to visit or find out more on the internet. we were just in awe of the scale of the projects.

After visiting the second Dolmen site we set TomTom to the coordinates of our final destination today; El Torcal. It’s really amazing that we have extremely clever navigational devices that most times amaze us with the precision of their navigation, but, sometimes are just plain stupid. OK as a result of having such clever devices the stock of maps we carry is now kept to large scale route planning editions which are mostly out of date. But when we set dear old Tom to go the fastest route to somewhere, note I said the fastest not the shortest.  This stupid instrument when faced with a choice, decided that rather than simply navigating round a wide, smooth running, ring road to get onto the correct road it will have a bit of fun and go straight through the centre of a very congested, ancient town with roads the size of alleyways. OK with a car it would be frustrating, with a 2.5mt x 7.5mt, 4.5 tonne motorhome it is somewhat challenging. Rant over, lets get back to todays travelling…..

When we finally found the road we needed it was only about fifty yards from last nights camper stop DOH.

Our destination is only about twenty five kilometre of lovely twisty and scenic roads before we arrive at El Torcal a National Park which is on top of a mountain (1208mt) via a steep road without barriers, Slightly challenging driving for Steve who has developed Vertigo in recent years. This mountain contains rock structures which rival the best the USA canyons have to offer.

The park is free to enter (GPS: N36.95348, W4.544121). there are two routes round the park, the Green route 1.5km long and the extended Yellow route 3km long, we opted for Yellow which seemed more like 6km and in fact we recorded nearly 10,000 steps which is usually 6km for us, but  stepping round, over and up on to large rocks all the time does increase the effort and perhaps feels longer.

Explanation of the sights is needless when we can show a few of the very many pictures we took this afternoon. (click or touch any picture to get a bigger, higher resolution version. Then back arrow to return to the blog.)

The structures are truly amazing, some really defying gravity. Walking through them it feels as if we have been transported into a Giants playground where their children have built cairns out of nearby, giant pebbles. The difficult part is persuading yourself that these structures have balanced here for thousands if not millions of years.

The park no longer likes Motorhomes parking overnight which is a shame because there could be some fine sunsets here perhaps, so we head down to the bottom of the hill where there is a fairly level car park to stay the night (GPS: N36.96300, W4.51358) with about six other motorhomes.

Well today will certainly take some beating for truly mega structures.

Just a reminder, click on any picture to see a larger version. Then click the back arrow to return to the blog.

 

Till next time…..

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