Spain Trip May 2025 - Part 10 El Torcal, Andalucia

El Torcal is a nature reserve in a small mountain range near Antequera with amazing karst limestone rock formations.

We were not able to drive all the way up to the visitor centre but there was a shuttle bus which took us from the main car park further down the road, and we didn't have to wait very long. In the park there are several loop walks you can take of different lengths.

The map below shows the last few places that we visited up to El Torcal, with Gibraltar showing on the map bottom left.

Wherever you are the scenery is just amazing.

I saw a number of these huge plants on the way up in the bus and I have found out that it is called the Villous Deadly Carrot (Thapsia villosa). Villous means shaggy apparently.

A Rock Bunting (Emberiza cia). If you remember, we saw our first ever one earlier in the trip in the Monfrague National Park. So this bird and the Booted Eagle were the two lifers that we saw this trip.

Faces in Things time! Can you see any? In the middle, I see a man sideways on wearing a long horsehair wig (think Georgian times) and in front of him (on the left) is a dog's face, also sideways on. Maybe you will see something completely different!

Snapdragons and other plants growing out of the rock high overhead.

A relatively short post this time as I couldn't add it to the following destination or the post would have been too long. 

I will try to post more frequently now as I have the rest of this trip plus our Italian trip still to post about - and only three and a half months before we set off on our travels again!

Guess what, we just watched Travel Man with Joe Lycett last night which was filmed in Malaga. And where did they go? To that raised walkway in the gorge that I mentioned in my last post! Still glad we didn't do it, and K has said that having seen the photo I linked to, he wouldn't have gone on it either! 😀

Spain Trip May 2025 - Part 9 El Chorro, Andalucia

This is an area of reservoirs and lovely scenery which first caught my eye as there is a raised boardwalk through a gorge, very like that walkway that we took in Spain in 2024. The more I looked into it though, the more I was put off - not only is it a long walk, but the walkway itself is extremely high up, up to 330ft above the river! I don't want to embed the photo here for those with vertigo, but take a look at this photo on Wikipedia if you dare! So we just spent the day stooging around enjoying ourselves with our feet firmly on the ground instead.

This was the first time I had an opportunity to take a photo of this broom so that I could ID it.  It's growing all through Extremadura and lots of Andalucia, but is very different from the more regular Spanish Broom which was growing when we were in the north near Portugal. This is Retama sphaerocarpa, though I can't find a common name for it in English.

On our way to a scenic viewpoint we visited the interesting ruins of Bobastro, part of a complex including a fortress, cave dwellings and a C9th Christian Mozarabic church. The church was carved into the sandstone rock on the site of the old fortress and the settlement was the refuge of Omar Ben Hafsún, a Muslim who converted to Christianity. He sought refuge here during his rebellion against the Emirate of Cordoba and their unfair taxation and mistreatment of the citizens.

At its peak there were about 1,500 people living in this area and there were cisterns to hold water (Keith is peering into one) which were carved out of the rock. People would have to climb down to the river to bring water back which was a feat in itself.

Originally this church would have had a roof but the site fell into disrepair in the C13th.

Despite the rock I found a number of wildflowers growing, some right out of what seemed like solid rock!

Top: Echium angustifolium, Narrow-leaved Bugloss
Below left: Jasione montana
Below right: Antirrhinum (possibly conversum)

The yellow flower has nothing to do with the plant that it is growing out of - talk about confusing! The whitish plant is Paronychia sp. but I've no idea what the yellow flower is. Paronchia is tiny and the flowers are held within these white bracts, so small that I couldn't photograph closer into it (with this camera).

Remains of walls which could have been part of the fortress or could be rooms relating to the church. There wasn't a lot of information there on site, so I have learned more about this place whilst writing this post.

This is a Spoonwing (Nenoptera bipennis) - Keith's photo on left and mine on right.  As you can see they don't always perch in places which make for nice clean photos! Open the collage and look at their 'tails' - actually hindwings - they are amazing!

At the top of the hill where Bobastro is situated is a scenic viewpoint overlooking a dam.

I spied this interesting jumping spider which I think is Philaeus chrysops, and this is the male. The female is just browny colours as usual!

We then moved on and headed to the area of reservoirs. We passed where the entrance to the raised walkway path was and there were a lot of people headed there - you have to wear a hard hat so you can tell who is going on the walk. It would be impossible to turn around once you get on the walkway as there is little room to pass people on it, so I am very pleased we gave it a miss. 

Just walking up to the mirador was tough enough for me as it involved a lot of steps, and even with my alpine stick I really struggled. K gave me his stick for coming back down which really helped take the weight off my knees and hips. I met a man coming up who was also going slowly and struggling with sticks. He asked how much further it was to the mirador. We got talking, and he told me he was recovering from Lyme Disease, and six months earlier he couldn't even walk. That's really scary as I didn't know the disease could affect you that badly. I hope he managed to get to the top as it was such a lovely view.

The water was such a lovely rich colour.

As you might have noticed, my brother is always in my photos, whether I like it or not!! 😂

Red-veined Darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii).

Finally a cropped image of a Booted Eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus) - it was high overhead and K identified it thanks to the Merlin app. It's the first one of these eagles that we have seen, so one of the few lifers that we saw this trip!

So all in a great day full of history, amazing scenery and wonderful wildlife!

Decorated pots and flowering orchids

During October and November I spent some time decorating plastic and terracotta plant pots. I painted some larger terracotta ones to put out the front of the garage where the old flower bed once stood, and I wanted more blue pots. I also painted some smaller ones to put on the terrace during the summer.

Most are stencilled but the one pot on the right is decoupaged - with the same paper serviette that I used for my Christmas tree baubles last year. The smaller pots were initially painted with chalk paint, then stencilled (or decoupaged), and finally finished off with several coats of clear varnish for protection. The larger pots were painted with an exterior paint so I just varnished over the stencilled portion of the pot.

This is the other side of the pots.

Work in progress - the two terracotta pots to go outside the garage are on the left - note the dragonfly! And of course there are some butterflies, too. 😀

The next photos were taken at New Year of my orchids which are mostly flowering again - it seems like they never stop! The white Phalaenopsis had just finished flowering when it put out another shoot from the old stem! It just goes to show - don't cut off the stems of Phalaenopsis after flowering.

In the foreground is my Jewel Orchid (Ludisia discolor) which really needs repotting and is starting to suffer and lose its leaves - I'm a bit worried about it. But I can't repot until it finishes flowering.

Two different Phalaenopsis plants - there's another with spotty leaves in our bedroom and with the white one, that makes four flowering at the moment!

This is my Dendrobium which is my favourite orchid and it has been flowering since September.

By the time they finish flowering all the wild ones outside will be popping up so living here I will rarely be without orchids in flower. 😁

Two weeks later - unfortunately we had a surprising minus 6C and minus 4C the following night and I think most of my patio plants have been killed. My Kaffir Lime looks dead although the Meyer Lemon still has a few green leaves amongst the brown ones. Everything else looks brown and trashed, even the plants well under cover on the covered patio where normally they survive winter without any problems. So all I can do is wait and see whether my lantanas come back to life (as they always lose their leaves in winter anyway) and hopefully my lemon will survive, and we will see if anything else comes back to life. My fault really for not checking the weather forecast, although I wouldn't have had enough horticultural fleece or bubble wrap for all my plants. Geraniums can be easily replaced after all.