We previous published information on the three walks planned by Almuñécar Town Hall for October to December - one a month, but the first one is upon us.

Tomorrow’s walk is categorised ‘medium difficulty’ and will take about six hours – piece of doddle!

A walk through the chestnut-forest-lined riverbanks full of autumnal colours – a plod through a painter’s palette and a bit of mud and sweaty socks thrown in!

The bus from Almuñécar will take you to Jerez del Marquesado (Guadix area) to begin the walk and will take you to the balsa del Alcázar along the Tizna footpath and descend to the hydroelectric station before returning suitable knackered to the village again.

Quoting good-old Wikipedia: “It origins go back to the Prehistoric Era, more specifically to the culture of El Argar  belonging to the Neolithic era and remains of mining from the Bronze Age through to Roman times.

In the Roman times, the population would receive the name of Sericus or Sericis or what the Arabs would call Mecina or Alcázar (castle or fortress) and Xerix (silk) because of the coexistence of the two peoples; the pre-Muslim inhabitants that built the fortress and, Xeriz, meaning silk which the Muslim culture introduced.

The muslim (Xerix) was the predominant one. Consequently Mecina integrated it in the 12th century. Because of its abundance of water, the Nasrid kings of Granada held extensive areas of land.”

Editorial comment: that’s not a straight quote from Wikipedia because who ever did the English version just ran the original Spanish text through Google Translate and came out with underwater Mongolian instead of standard English… in other words, we had to ‘correct’ it a bit.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)