11 January 2018 – Cocoll

Winter has arrived and everyone turned up for the walk well prepared

Dave and Sue Eaton had offered to lead this walk following a route which was new to us

Unfortunately Dave is recovering from an illness over Christmas and New Year, however Sue turned up to take on the challenge

We knew it would be windy, and Sue warned us at the start that we might have to cut the walk short or even abandon it if it was too bad

It is a steady climb right from the start, and normally we would start to remove layers of clothing after half an hour or so – but not today

Conversation was difficult as the track was narrow and we had to walk in single file, and the wind made it difficult to hear what was being said

After an hour we reached our banana stop, and everyone is looking far too happy 

However four of our group decided that they had enough and quit the walk

I took them back to a point where they could easily follow the track back to Benichembla

On rejoining the group I discovered that another member had enough and did not want to continue

We almost abandoned the walk, but fortunately John (who knows the area well) offered to take her back to the village

The remaining twelve continued to the airfield, where we made fools of ourselves

We managed to find a sheltered spot out of the wind to have our picnic lunch

It was too cold to hang about for long, and after 20 minutes we set off on the return journey

Despite the sun, the wind was bitterly cold as you can see from this photo

For the first part of the descent it was all we could do avoid being blown over

But everyone was very cheerful and positive, and again appear much happier than they had any right to be in the circumstances

 As we approached Benichembla we met David the invalid, he had got bored and joined us for the final stretch

So we started the walk with eighteen, lost six, gained one and ended with

Thirteen

Despite the weather I think we all enjoyed the walk, or at least were glad that we had done it

Time taken 5.5 hours

Distance walked 12.5 km

Total Ascent 750 metres