Tag Archives: Walking

Cami-flage 2: Here’s the Walk(er) plan

Leave a Reply

My previous post outlined the background and general approach to the next couple of weeks, so I thought I’d provide a bit of plan detail for the record before we start trying for a succession of walks that take the place of the Cami de Cavalls on Menorca.

A disclaimer: this is a plan, OK? If the weather takes a turn for the worse, or some domestic admin gets in the way, we are going to be flexible. But the idea is to walk around 115 miles starting this Friday, September 11th.

The vast majority of these walks come from a great website called Fancy-Free Walks. So, if you fancy free walks, we can recommend this as a great place to look for them.

Our 13 planned walks are as follows:

Day number Description Length Cami Length Hostelry
01 Puttenham and Waverley 12.45 12.66 The Barley Mow
02 Friday Street, Leith & Holmbury Hills 9.34 8.47 The Royal Oak
03 Staple Hill & Chobham Common 5.85 5.94 The Red Lion
04 Holmbury & Pitch Hills 6.88 6.77 None available 🙁
05 Virginia Water Lake 5.58 5.36 Cafe in the Park
06 Windsor Great Park 9.42 9.11 Bluebells
07 Box Hill 11.13 11.74 The King William IV
08 Fishpool, McLaren, Horsell Common 9.12 8.11 Heather Farm Cafe
09 St. Martha’s, Tillingbourne 10.14 9.32 The Percy Arms
10 Ockham, Wisley 7.12 7.18 Ockham Bites
11 Leith Hill 10.41 10.79 The Plough
12 Haslemere, Hindhead 10.14 8.53 Devil’s Punchbowl Pub
13 Denbies Hillside 9.12 10.99 Denbies Wine Estate
TOTAL 116.7 115 2,678m

Had we been in Menorca, we would have sought out somewhere decent for a rest and some lunch, and so I’ve noted some inviting-looking places for us to stop during our re-creation. While it would be nice to stop in for a full lunch at each hostelry, we’ve begun to think that the consequences on our waistlines would be too much. However, where possible we’ll look in for a beer and a packet of crisps or some such. As you can see, there are a couple of excursions where there’s no obvious hostelry, so either we’ll take a picnic or we’ll soldier on without much of a break and have a glass of something cold when we get home.

While it’s a shame that we’re not in The Foreign doing the lunatic things that one does when abroad (lunch every day, walk immense distances, that kind of thing) one has to admit that there are compensations for having to remain in the UK. We know the bed will be comfortable; we know the shower will be luxurious; we know that there will be The Right Sort Of Tea (and milk); we will have unfettered access to appropriate clothing for the day (including clean underwear); and we can say “sod it, we’re not going” if it rains. But our earnest hope is that we can do the walks above in the order above in succession. I will report on each walk (including, inter alia, the photo of the Xoriguer gin bottle) on subsequent blog posts, so keep your eyes peeled for each enthralling instalment!

Cami-flage: what we didn’t do on our 2020 holiday

2 Replies

September 2020. For us, as for so many people, the novel coronavirus has ravaged our holiday plans. The various excursions my wife and I had planned for 2020 have been put back to 2021 (or possibly later – who knows?) and lockdown meant we had resigned ourselves to a year at home. We’re lucky – we don’t feel this is much of a burden.

But then the government eased lockdown to the point where travel to selected foreign countries was not only permitted but even encouraged as a way of getting the battered travel industry back on the road to recovery. With pleasant memories of Menorca from our recent Spanish sojourn, and Spain being on the “approved” list, we hatched a plan to return to walk the Cami de Cavalls, a 185km hike round the coast of the island over the course of several days. This, we reasoned, would give us a chance for some exercise while keeping us away from crowds and minimising any Covid-type risk.

This plan lasted about a week.

Gradually, virus infections started rising around the world, and first mainland Spain and then the whole country including its islands lost its approved status. We held out as long as we could, but the Foreign Office guidance still says avoid any but essential travel, so this excursion joined the others in the “pending” file.

However, nil desperandum, as an office colleague of mine used to say when events and idiocy conspired to shatter expertly-constructed plans; we decided to stage a UK-based version of the endeavour. The version of the Cami we had planned took 13 days (as you can see, there are levels for hardier, and even, some might say, mentally suspect, folk), so we decided we would do 13 walks around our neck of the woods in Surrey, recording and photographing them as we went, and including a photo of the distinctive bottle of the Menorcan gin, Xoriguer.

So, here’s the plan: to recreate the 13-stage walk

(Image courtesy of Cami-360)

The 13 stages are as follows:

Day number Description Length(km) Length(miles) Elevation gain(m)
01 MAÓ – FAVÀRITX 20.37 12.66 403
02 FAVÀRITX – ARENAL D’EN CASTELL 13.63 8.47 227
03 ARENAL D’EN CASTELL – SES SALINES 9.56 5.94 109
04 SES SALINES – BINIMEL·LÀ 10.90 6.77 160
05 BINIMEL·LÀ – ES ALOCS 8.63 5.36 323
06 ES ALOCS – CALA MORELL 14.66 9.11 278
07 CALA MORELL – CIUTADELLA 18.90 11.74 304
08 CIUTADELLA – CAP D’ARTRUTX 13.05 8.11 25
09 CAP D’ARTRUTX – CALA GALDANA 17.37 10.79 161
10 CALA GALDANA – SANT TOMÀS 11.56 7.18 239
11 SANT TOMÀS – CALA EN PORTER 15.00 9.32 198
12 CALA EN PORTER – BINIBÈQUER 13.73 8.53 141
13 BINIBÈQUER – MAÓ 17.69 10.99 112
TOTAL MAÓ – MAÓ 185km 115miles 2,678m

So the Menorca hike averages just over eight and three quarters miles each day and climbs around 640 feet, which makes the pomada at the end of each day very rewarding.

Some rules of engagement:

  1. We’ll measure our distances using Endomondo on a mobile phone. This tends to be optimistic in its distance evaluation (particularly compared with, say, ViewRanger), but, hey, I’m not complaining. Update: Endomondo has been discontinued in favour of a sister app, also from UnderArmour, called MapMyFitness.  Having imported my Endomondo data thither, posts will reflect the updated URLs.
  2. It won’t be possible to match distance and height, but we’ll do our best.
  3. We’ll plan to include a hostelry on each walk if we can. In desperation, I suppose we’ll have to take a picnic.
  4. We will do the walks in as close to a two-week window as we can, but if it’s raining, I’m sorry, all bets are off for that day. This is a holiday we’re supposed to be recreating, here.

I’m pleased to report that the endeavour was successful and very enjoyable. To see the details of the plan and the actual walks, take a look at the blog section devoted to this.

Afterthoughts: So…..Croatia, eh?

Leave a Reply

In the midst of dealing with the fallout from being away for a fortnight (laundry, mainly, though having lots of nice cups of tea also features heavily), I think it’s worth gathering our thoughts about the last couple of weeks and sharing them here, just in case it helps others planning something similar. Generally, both Jane and I thoroughly enjoyed our experience of Croatia and would heartily recommend it (particularly the Dalmatian coast) as a walking and/or sailing destination.

Timing. July and August can be fiercely hot all over Croatia. The best time to visit is May or (like we did) September. This is the second time we’ve visited in that month and the weather we experienced was, by and large, lovely. The Croatian tourist season runs out at the end of September or very early in October and things start to wind down quite markedly, so getting hotel rooms later than September might be challenging.

Walking. Our experience of walking in Dalmatia is very positive, but it was definitely a good thing to have thoroughly researched the level of difficulty in prospect, and the levels of fitness required, before booking the walking tour. We were operating towards the top end of our range with many of the group younger (and fitter) than us… Anyhoo:

  • The tracks are plentiful and well-marked (though I wonder how many of them we would have found without having an expert guide to do this for us).
  • Most of the routes we undertook were short on shade, which means that the walking can be pretty hot work, and taking lots of water is essential.
  • The tap water is perfectly drinkable, so take your own bottles and refill.
  • Very few of the walks we did passed any outposts of civilisation, so it’s advisable to take some food with you as well.
  • Mobile signal appeared to extend over much of the terrain we covered.

Sailing. This is big business along the Dalmatian coast. There are lots and lots of sailing boats, even some small towns sport large marinas and generally this part of the Adriatic is a good place for sailing, with or without an engine (take note, however, of the section below about the weather).

Landscape. The Dalmatian landscape tends towards being mountainous and scrubby – the land is difficult to farm, being stony. So the trails through it are pleasant enough and will occasionally offer great views from the tops of hills, but are otherwise not particularly scenic and are in some cases quite challenging. Our admiration for the local people who used these trails simply to get from A to B (often with their livestock, and often despite advanced age) grew day by day! We followed a couple of trails through woodland, which were more rewarding.

Townscape. The cities we visited all had old towns, which are all worth looking around. The towns and villages are by and large somewhere between pretty and handsome – well-maintained, tidy and picturesque.

Money. Croatia is no longer the cheap destination it was, but it’s not too expensive, either. In the towns, debit cards were widely accepted in shops, cafés and restaurants, and it was easy to find ATMs. You might find places that will accept Euros, but it’s best to have local currency (Kune) available. If you’re off the beaten track, you’ll need cash to be able to buy anything.

Eating out. Tourism is an important industry in Croatia and so there is usually a plentiful supply of cafés and restaurants in the towns, with English spoken and good service.

Cuisine. As you’d expect, there’s some good fish on offer, and seafood (especially squid and octopus). But emphasis tends to be towards meat and potatoes – the vegetarians in our group had some difficulty getting anything more imaginative than a plate of grilled mixed vegetables on occasion. For non-vegetarians, a couple of traditional dishes are worth seeking out: Pašticada, a slow-cooked beef stew; and Peka, a baked dish of meat and, yes, vegetables, cooked under a dome in barbecue coals. But there’s no problem finding more cosmopolitan fare such as steak, pizza or burgers – the burgers I had were very good, and served without bread, which I prefer.

Drinking out. You’ll find that most restaurants have a limited selection of wines and what is offered is likely to have been made locally or nationally. Croatia has a well-developed wine-making tradition and the local wines are perfectly good without being stellar. Local beers tend to be of the lager persuasion and are perfectly good.

Liqueurs. Something of a Croatian speciality is the production of liqueurs based on local produce – one we found to be very nice is based on sour cherry, but you’ll also come across walnut liqueur and something called Prošek, which is grape-based and quite sweet, among other variations such as olive and cornelian cherry. These are quite often offered as a welcome drink and I think it’s polite to sample at least one…

Bloody Cruise-Ship Tourists. Many of the larger or more attractive towns in Croatia are magnets for the big cruise liners – Dubrovnik and Split have a constant stream of them during the holiday season, for example, and Trogir during the height of the season is reportedly an utter zoo. So you may find that such towns are crowded during the day.

Bloody weather. Actually, for the most part our weather was pretty much perfect – a bit hot for me for going uphill, but sunny, warm and lovely for sitting outside when eating or drinking. But the Bura wind that we experienced is capable of wreaking havoc on sailing boats and travel itineraries. I was grateful for the experience of our captain to know it was coming (it took many others by surprise) and plan accordingly; if you’re considering sailing in the Adriatic, this is the sort of thing that can become very suddenly of very great pith and moment. Having said all that, and with the benefit of hindsight and no havoc having been wreaked, we’re glad to have experienced it; apart from anything else, the Bura clears the air and the visibility after it died down somewhat was vastly improved.

For anyone interested in sailing, walking, history, archaeology and/or pretty places to visit, the Dalmatian coast of Croatia is somewhere that we think should be high on the list. We hope that these thoughts, along with the descriptions of our various vacation days, help in understanding the possibilities that Croatia presents to the tourist.