Market day and Rio stroll

I went to the mercadillo to shop for veggies this morning, and for the amazingly small sum of €4.60 bought 4 avocados, 3 bananas, 3 nectarines, 4 large garlic heads, a half kilo box of cherry tomatoes, and 600 grams of French beans. The only disaster was the 60 cents worth of avocados which weren't up to scratch, as they'd not ripened properly, insufficiently watered.

Then, I walked down the rio Chillar to the sea, keeping an eye out for interesting birds. Yet again I saw a flock of goldfinches, but they rise and fly so quickly that snapping them is impossible when you're out strolling. I caught a swallow dipping over a river ford a few times, terrible small in the vast expanse, but so noticeable from their fast and gracious movement.

Further down the river, beneath the old town bridge, a got several good photos of a bird I couldn't identify, with a call that suggested to me that it could be a straying shore bird.

When I checked the RSPB website, the best match was the little ringed plover, a wading bird that isn't confined to the shore at all.

There was a tow truck on the beach, extricating a car that had driven quite a way on to the sand and was stuck up to its axels, heaven knows why.

 

At the moment, there's little or no water running over the surface as the rio Chillar approaches the sea. Possibly, at wetter times of year, the saturated sand is firm enough to prevent a car from sinking right it. If the driver was familiar with this, an expensive error of judgement had been made.

Going up river

I walked into town early to celebrate the midweek Eucharist for Ascension Day in the church shop a day early. There were a dozen of us present, including a couple of visitors from Aberystwyth who come here regularly every year. After coffee and a chat I did some routine food shopping on the way back. There was an email waiting for me on the Chaplain's address requesting a memorial service next month for a British expat living in a village outside Motril, about three quarters of an hour's drive from here. Plenty of time to liaise with the family and prepare for the occasion.

Late afternoon, when it was starting to cool down after 40 degree heat at midday, I went for a walk up the rio Chillar valley towards the sierras to see what birds I could see and photograph. It's my third  walk into the local parque natural in the past two years, and it won't be my last. 

Directly below our urbanizacion, from the valley floor, there were swallows, swifts and house martins hunting for insects. The neighbourhood kestrel was out and about, and I was amazed to see it being harrassed by a couple of swallows as it patrolled a few hundred feet over the valley floor. Eventually, it took advantage of evening thermals to rise a few hundred feet higher, where it could fly undisturbed. I got a fleeting glimpse of a family of siskins whizzing across the river into bamboo thickets. They always move too quickly to snap, when you see them. 

There's one stretch of river which appears to be the territory of a group of yellow wagtails. I got a few shots of one on a high tension electricity cable on the way up,

 I caught a few more of birds in the water in the same stretch on the way back down the river.

 An enjoyable outing, but somewhat tiring. I reckon I walked over eight miles altogether today.

House building - local signs of life?

Another cool and cloudy day and that encouraged me to go out walking over midday and afternoon, rather than hide indoors from the heat. As I was about to set out, I received a phone call about a funeral to be arranged for next Monday at Velez Malaga crematorium for a Briton who lived in a village inland from the town. I plan to go out and meet the family on Saturday when they've gathered from far off places where they live.

Once the initial arrangements were firmly in place, I walked out into rio Chillar valley below us, crossed the ford and went up the ridge on the other side almost as far as the Autovia de Mediterraneo. It's a hilly area of orchards, market gardens, new houses and houses under construction with mostly unmetalled roads. Then I crossed another smaller fruit and olive tree line tributary valley, to reach another new area of housing above and beyond it. This was more of a planned development, with larger houses being built on bigger plots. One advertised for €59,000 would be on the market for five times that much in Britain. It says a lot about the impact of recession here. 

Despite the economic crisis, several houses are being worked on by contractors. The other night I noted that a large hotel sized area beside a roundabout on the way out of town has a tall crane working on it. The site was at a standstill when I was last here two years ago.  Green shoots of recovery, or is someone taking a huge investment risk? Growth may now be slow, but Nerja has developed enormously over the past thirty years, and has a lot of visitors. There are empty shops, but proportionately fewer than back in bustling Cardiff.

I walked out of the urbanizacion and came to the main road into Nerja from the autovia roundabout, close to to the Lidl supermarket, and the newly built 'Thanatorium la Esperanza', funeral parlour yet to be opened for use. I wonder how long before marketing services to the bereaved take this form in the U.K.?

As I walked further down the road to cross the main bridge into town, I noticed a huge bank of sea mist rolling inshore, touching the mountains on either side of the bay.

It's not quite what you expect to see on a Midsummer Eve on the Costa del Sol. Pleasantly cool is far better than horribly humid. More like a British summer, which already seems to have come and gone, by all reports.

   

Down the rio Chillar to the sea

Apart from a visit to the shops in the morning I stayed in during the hottest part of the day, and today was several degrees warmer than yesterday. Getting acclimatised takes me a good while. Finally I went out at six and walked for a couple of hours, this time down the Chillar river valley to the sea, along un-metalled road linking market gardens, horse stables and builders' yards, with the rest of the town's infrastructure, by way of a tarmacked access strip by the main town road bridge. There's even the imposing ruin of a tall building, which is most likely to have been a cane sugar refinery from the 19th century. 

 The riverside is a sort of pre-modern industrial zone, and perched on the thirty metre cliff over the east bank are buildings that represent modern times - apartments and holiday homes of the tourism industry era.

You pass under the tall viaduct of the town centre's by-pass road. Under its massive beams hundreds of swallows and swifts roost, and during the day swarm relentlessly in search of insects. Here the river runs slower and spreads out into streamlets, which I imagine are a good breeding ground for midges and flies. Modern scale hospitality caters for visiting birds en masse as well as humans. 

A quarter of a mile further on, is the century old town road bridge, flanked by a supermarket and other buildings that show you're close to the heart of the modern town. 

From the other side of the road bridge, right down to the sea are nicely constructed promenades on either river bank, providing pleasant places to stroll of an evening and links to recreational facilities. as well as to Playazo and Torrecillo beaches. 

 These improvements to the river banks stop flash floods inundating lower lying residential areas created for tourism and so the area benefits from tourism. Here the river run is channelled with concrete making it easier to clear of debris, also providing shallow areas where birds can safely drink and keep an eye out for predators.

By the time I reached the sea, the beaches were almost empty. Visitors would now be in their hotels or apartments getting cleaned up and ready to go out for the evening stroll and supper. The walk full circle back to church house through the town took me another 45 minutes. Two and a quarter hours out in full sun left me feeling scorched and much tireder than yesterday's walk upstream into the Parque Natural. Despite this, it gave me an interesting view of how Nerja has developed.

Rio Chillar explored

After a comfortably warm night's sleep and breakfast, I made the half hour walk down into the centre of town to the church charity shop to celebrate the Eucharist at 9.30am for seven people, both shop workers regulars and visitors - two newcomers - who turned up. It's a well established pastoral point of contact with English speakers who either live locally or take holidays here. We celebrated St Barnabas a day late, and afterwards a few of us drank coffee together at Rosie's bar next door.

I walked home in a more leisurely way than I'd walked down, making several attempts to capture images of the hundreds of swifts and swallows which hunt for food relentlessly in the air day by day. I caught some remarkable images of them in a street two years ago. Here's one of the best.

This is one of this morning's better efforts. Will I improve on it with practice, I wonder?

I'm still getting used to a new camera, which doesn't have a separate viewfinder. Its display screen doesn't perform well in bright light - unless I haven't yet found out how to adjust some hidden setting.

After lunch and a rather wakeful siesta, which ended looking at a local map, I went out to see if I could find the path down to the Chillar river valley floor which is on the far side of urbanizacion Almihara 1, but not signposted. There's actually a proper road leading down to a river ford and to the un-metalled track which runs up the valley. It provides access to the several orchards, market gardens and stabling compounds along the sides of the river. The steep ravine separating urbanizacion I & II contains several caves. One of them, high up has been transformed into a dwelling with a terrace, and there's another one further up river right underneath the autovia del Mediterraneo viaduct where it spans a steep gorge. I can't imagine living with the traffic noise there 24/7.

I followed the river valley inland, and after half an hour's walk came to some neglected and abandoned buildings with a large panel in front of them announcing this to be the Parque natural Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama, telling you all the things you were not allowed to do therein, warning of the risk of fire, but giving no other information about the features of interest in this limestone river valley.

From here on it was necessary to walk in the wide river bed, and eventually it was impossible not to get walk in the river shallows and get wet feet.

The water proved pleasantly luke-warm and I pressed on, walking for another half hour until I came to a three metre waterfall, close to which hummed a hydro-electric power  generation plant.

At this time I turned for home, having seen dozens of young people walking back down river, it was clear they'd started earlier during siesta and were heading back to spend an evening in town.

When I got back to the entrance area of the Parque natural, a young man, bronzed and long haired, was sitting on the back ledge of a small van with the doors open playing the guitar and singing, with only his German Shepherd dog for an audience. He stopped, smiled and greeted me, and asked first in Spanish with an accent I couldn't penetrate, and then in English, if I was the last walker out, and would I like to buy a drink from his picnic chill box. How enterprising I thought, out here in the back of beyond. I didn't want to stop and chat however, as I'd set my heart on getting back in time to listen to the Archers on digital TV. My little stroll turned into a delightful three hour trek up-river through forest, past bamboo groves, with majestic plane and pine trees. I'm pretty sure I saw a yellow wagtail, and a pair bullfinches, though I must check the colours and markings to be sure.