Good graffiti in amongst the pines

I'm not too keen on walking for fun. I especially dislike those uphill sections as they make me wheeze and cough. I have no problem at all with walking as a means of transport but I don't think of it as a pastime. Pop me down in a strange town and I'll trot around happily. Now most of my friends and pals don't agree with me. They think walking is healthy, fun and free. They even list it as a hobby; like collecting stamps, singing in a choir or spending hours watching Instagram videos. They buy sticks and specialist clothing and footwear. These people can be persuasive. They offer a destination with beer as an incentive. I am sometimes, very rarely, persuaded. I wonder what the fuss is about. Green and brown colour scheme, lots of pines, a bit of esparto grass maybe some rosemary and the occasional hare or hoopoe.

I am impressed by the solidarity of the walkers though. Often, when I've been tricked into walking in the countryside, maybe in a natural park or near some prehistoric site, there are signs to mark the way. Not necessarily those finger posts that tell you how many kilometres it is to the Bronze Age settlement or the spectacular waterfall but just little painted marks or piles of stones to keep you from walking off and becoming benighted as the wolves howl and the wild pigs attack to protect their young. 

Some of the marks are there because someone, town halls, provinces or regions, has paid for them to be there. They may or may not be maintained. Sometimes they are there because some association or even an individual thinks it's a good idea, a public service. They're the sort of people that love to be in the fresh air and presume that everyone else does. These marks can be really useful but they can also let you down because they are "unofficial".

There are other paths with marks which are homologated, standardised. These are the ones listed by FEDME, Federación española de deportes de montaña y escalada or the Spanish Federation of Mountain Sports and Climbing. These paths are the GR, PR and SL paths. There are homologation criteria for these paths, rules that say what the characteristics should be and how they should be maintained. The idea is that if you follow one of these trails you won't suddenly be abandoned to your own devices half way up some windswept mountain pass.

The three sets of marks that you will see along these paths are painted flashes on surfaces such as rocks, posts and trees . They are sometimes backed up with piles of stones, little cairns called mojones or hitos. They have colour schemes that tell you what sort of path you are following. Red and white markings for the GR, yellow and white markings for the PR and green and white markings for the SL.

The GR routes are at least 50 kms long are marked with a red and a white flash. 

The PR routes are between 10 kms and 50 kms long and are marked with a yellow and a white flash

The SL routes are less than 10 kms long and are marked with a green and a white flash

If the colours are painted as two (or more) parallel flashes the instruction is that you are on the right path and should keep going The marks can be combined: For example a white, red and yellow flash would show that the mid distance route shared the path with a longer route for that part of its length.

If the colours are arranged in a cross it means that you have gone the wrong way and should backtrack till you find the parallel marks. 

There is also a turn sign.

Should you ever, mistakenly, wander away from the safety of the asphalt and concrete, with shop windows to look in and signs of civilisation all around, you may come across these strange markings. But don't forget, as Phil Esterhaus used to say, "Let's be careful out there".

Eine Kleine Nachtwanderung

Cabeço towers above Pinoso. It's a salt dome. There are traces of human habitation there in pre-history and people still live on its slopes today. Plonked right on the top are a series of masts which people refer to as the repetidor, the repeater. It's a while since I've been up there but I think there is a mobile phone mast and I know that the local radio station uses one of the masts too.

Apparently it's become a bit of a local tradition to take a night-time stroll up the 893 metre high hill on one of the days during a week dedicated to promoting sport and a healthy lifestyle in Pinoso. Personally it's the first time I'm ever heard of it so the promotion must be spot on but there you go. This year all the walkers were being asked to contribute a euro with the cash going towards research into rare diseases.

I thought I'd go and see if there were any potential snaps. I had this idea of a really wide angle shot with someone looking suitably rugged putting a large sporty looking trainer in the bottom left of the image with the group behind picked out in the unforgiving light of the flash whilst the repeater twinkled away in the background. I never quite got around to putting the wide angle on the camera and the few snaps I did take are out of focus, boring and blasted with flash light. I have to say though that the whole thing was, and now a word I haven't used often since the 1980s, surreal.

We have quite a flash looking sports centre in Pinoso. Well it looks flash to me though I've no significant experience of sports installations to guarantee that my perception is accurate. I did my best to embrace the digital era but I simply didn't have the capacity to take on all those high tech sports clothes too. It's not even a part of the town I go to often.

When I arrived, just a bit before the 10pm start, there were little knots of people standing around the main entrance to the sports centre but, apart from the local police lounging by the two patrol cars, there was nothing official looking at all. So I followed a group of youngsters who were going up and behind the main building. It would have been a logical place to start a race - on the hillward side of the sports area. I wasn't going to ask anyone what was going on of course. That would have involved Spanish.

As I walked a little farther from the town I was surprised to find that there were quite a lot of houses. Where the small scale football stadium ended so did the town houses and the olive trees and almonds took over. The urban street became a single track rural road but there was still street lighting alongside the agricultural water hydrants. An odd mix. I realised it was quiet too. Quiet like it is near our house surrounded by open land. Not much traffic noise but the damned yap, yap yapping of myriad dogs and, just for tonight, occasional shouts and torch beams shining out from a little up the hill where a few spectators were gathering. There were also occasional voices from somewhere nearer the sports centre. The light was a mix of those yellow and orange and pink shades that various forms of street lighting give off. All this within a five minute walk of one of the main thoroughfares in Pinoso. I was wearing a light jacket and a T shirt and I was over-warm. Just in case you're worried I had shoes and trousers and other stuff on too.

A few people passed me, indeed some people I know vaguely said hello, then the Police car pointed its headlights up the track, turned on the blues and twos and crawled up the road. Behind came 400 people who looked perfectly normal but who had the intention of hiking up a biggish hill on a Thursday evening in the dark. It didn't seem to be a race. I don't know why I'd expected one. I took a few snaps. The people were gone and I walked back to the motor. About a hundred yards from the car park a bloke and a young lad were hurrying up the road. Obviously, despite the start being about fifteen minutes behind time, they'd arrived late. I'm already knackered said the man to the boy.

As I drove away from the town I could see the blue flashing lights crawling up the side of Cabeço. Distinctly odd.