Río Chíllar in Nerja has become very popular in the summer; too popular, in fact, with little control of the visitor numbers. In the peak season around 3,000 people a day use the route.
But it’s not so much that it attracts crowds like the River Ganges, but that they have this custom upon finishing the walk of tying their old training shoes together by the laces and throwing them over electricity lines so that they dangle there; scores of them.
And of course, the inevitable occurred recently when the wind and the weight of the accumulating shoes snapped the electricity cable and brought 200 metres of it down.
Fortunately, it was a private line and was not in use, so there were no sparks nor anybody injured. Endesa turned up to remove shoes from another line. They also informed the line owner that he should remove the fallen cable.
The Town Hall, in the following days, sent out a lorry with an elevating platform to remove all the shoes from the existing electricity cables and telephone lines along the route.
(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia – Photo: Eugenio Cabezas)