22 February 2016 – Javea to Denia Tower

We have done the walk from Javea Port to Denia Tower many times, but never led it.   We would like to add it to our Thursday walks, but first wanted to do a recce.  We were glad to have David and Rosemary with us, as they have also walked this area many times.

 

There was a major fire here last year, and it caused great damage.   We passed this group cutting down fire damaged trees

 

This is the result of tree cutting in just one section of the walk.   Apparently they want to replace fir trees, which burn very quickly and spread the fire

It took us an hour to reach the lighthouse.   No problem following the path so far.   The whole area is very open, and the track well signed and easy to follow.

The weather was a little hazy, and very pleasant whist walking.  But it was a little cool at the top, and we did not linger long over our water stop 

In fact we did get a little chilled, and were glad to get on with the walk

Much of the undergrowth is returning, but it is still a very open space.  This made it easy to keep our bearings.  But there was also a lot of tracks, none going in the direction we wanted to.   In addition someone has built a mass of large cairns all over the area.  Normally cairns help to find the correct path, but there were so many that they just confused.  And it did not help that some were not even on a track

David, Rosemary and Jan kept raving about Barbary Nuts.   They are quite pretty, but I can’t really see what all the fuss is about

Despite the confusion we did find our way to the Denia tower, but we did not find the path we had used with the Monday Group

It was 1.15 when we reached the tower, and we were all more than ready for our picnic lunch.   We found a sun trap at the tower, and settled down for a very pleasant and slightly extended break.

On the way back we found a much better route, and one which is new to us.   We

also found this large collection of cairns, which David dubbed “fred flintstone”.

Being David he could not resist adding to the cairns.   Fortunately he did no damage this time.

We returned to the abandoned police barracks, rather than to the windmills overlooking Javea.   It was already 3pm, and we did not want to make the return journey any longer than necessary.

We returned to Javea Port down the same track we had used in the morning.  We could have used the road through the urbanisation, but preferred this route

The walk had taken 6.5 hours, covered 16km and elevation of 293 metres.   But I am sure that we could do it in less time and perhaps cut a little off the distance now that we had completed the recce.