This past week there has been a dramatic shift in the weather temperature and we are now being blessed with warmth and sunshine! Little blossoms are finally covering the trees and squeezing out their precious pink and white petals. People (including us) seem to be rejoicing by getting outside drinking cañas with their menú del día's on the terraces and patios along the street side, basking in the 20+ degree days.
 |
| Pantones de Arriba |
So this weekend (with our couchsurfer) we decided to head back to the foothills of the Sierra Guadarrama mountains to complete a hike called the Cancho Cabeza Peak (boulder head peak). Its a relatively gentle climb which was perfect as Kara is a bit down with a cold. The starting point of our hike was a small hillside town called Patones Arriba and to get there we caught a bus from Madrid which took an hour and a half and dropped us off at Patones.
 |
| Walking through the town |
 |
| Renovated town house |
When we arrived at Patones the sun was already beating down and the bus thermometer said 21 degrees. After crossing the road we slowly meandered 2 kilometers up a small river path towards the settlement Patones Arriba (arriba means "up" in Spanish). The little town, settled quietly amongst the hills, wasn't visible at all. As we got closer and climbed into the hills we realised what an amazing town we had stumbled upon! To us, it had just been the start of the hike but the town was beautiful. The small hidden historic town was settled by the Paton family, who were Christian refugees escaping the muslim rule, sometime before 1527. They lived quietly going about their lives for centuries building an entire village from shards of black slate. The town eventually grew to be the Kingdom of Patones and was at one time home to 8000 residents ruled by the elected King of Patones. As cars and what not became more freely available a small settlement called Patones Abajo (abajo means "down" in Spanish) was developed (this is where the bus dropped us off) and eventually Patones Arriba was almost all but for a few stragglers abandoned in the mid 1960's. Later in the 1990's both the historic value and location for outdoor activities of Patones Arriba was noted and some restoration took place.
 |
| Street in Patones de Arriba |
 |
| Just follow the trail! |
 |
| Walking through the upper town |
 |
| First views! |
So upon arriving and resisting the urge to just sit down on a small barra terrace with a vino tinto we clambered up over the hill though the settlement to find our hiking track. Understanding this hike would be much gentler and relaxed than our previous - this time we weren't hiking through snow - we set off quite confidently. Somehow we got lost. How (again?!) this happened we didn't know, we were following a looped track and there weren't exactly trees hiding the path.
We would consider ourselves quite apt at following directions and pride ourselves with our observation skills when walking but somewhere the path just stopped and changed. This meant an extremely difficult climb off the track up a fire break (where we then found the original track). In our defence, later when back tracking we found the correct path which had no signage stating the path. Anyway, from the top of the Cancho Cabeza Peak the view was breath-taking.... quite literally... we
had just climbed a monster of a hillside.
 |
| Top of Cancho Cabeza |
We could see the snow peaked mountains of the Sierra Guadarrama range and looked down upon the Ponton de la Oliva reservoir. The surrounding area and hillsides were brushed with cereals, vineyards and olive groves. We stopped here to eat lunch, a baguette with Spanish cheese and jamon!
After our rest we followed the path down and returned to Patones Arriba for a well deserved cold beverage!
Tot Siens,
John and Kara
 |
| View towards the Ponton de la Oliva reservoir |
 |
| Hiking the foothills of Sierra Guadarrama |
No comments:
Post a Comment