Life in Culebrón

Monte Arabí is a natural park, about 20 kms out of Yecla, almost into Castilla la Mancha. It has some nice looking, rounded and very young, geologically speaking, Miocene rocks (10-12 million years old) and a bunch of trees and Mediterranean scrub. It's one of those places to wear the trousers you bought from Decathlon and to load a bottle of water, and maybe a bocadillo wrapped in silver paper, in your backpack. Mobile phones are a bit lost in the park - not much of a signal. I have to admit to not being a fan of most of the walks in this area. Ooh, look, a pine tree and some esparto grass, oh, and there's another pine tree. As Ivor Cutler said of the Scottish countryside - “We were soon well acquainted with the thistle, there are many thistles in Scotland”. I like Monte Arabí though because it's one of those places that has a long history of human settlement and I like the idea of continuity. The first time I was there, in 2011, I clambered up the hillside and peered thro...

I was born in West Yorkshire. I remember, as a callow youth, struggling through the gorse and heather on Keighley Moor, after my first ever visit to the Bronte's home village as a qualified driver, looking for cup and ring marks. I found some. I thought they were deadly boring to look at. I was profoundly impressed that they were there though. A continuity with the past. Imagine, someone, in their idle moments, a few thousand years ago, had chosen to leave their mark in the stone. If there had been mobile phones there might have been neither cups nor rings. We've got something similar, more impressive actually, on La Centenera Hill - the stone carvings the petroglyphs - here in Pinoso. Out at Monte Arabí near Yecla there are more. We humans, be we Tykes, Pinoseros and Yeclanos seem to want to mark our passing. My own initials are carved in the, "it's a school tradition don't you know", stone bench alongside the playing fields of my old grammar school - CJT 196...