Postscript to Torla

Or should I say postcript to torture. I have learnt some things from Torla. Great walk, but …

1. Thank god for waterproof boots. At 7pm when you still have at least another hour to walk and you have been walking almost non-stop since 9.45, it is too late to climb every mountain and ford every stream. So, when I got to a largish body of water, I just ploughed on through. Too tired to try to rock hop. Now I at least know that my boots ARE waterproof.

2. Every National Park car park should have a decent coffee outlet. We arrived, finally, at the car park and THERE WAS A CAFE SERVING NICE COFFEE. It was 6.45, and we still had to walk to our car because although lots of cars were in the car park, OURS WAS NOT; IT WAS A FURTHER HOUR AND A HALF AWAY BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN DECIDED TO WALK FROM OUR HOTEL RATHER THAN TO DRIVE TO THE MAIN CAR PARK AS EVERYONE ELSE HAD. This was what we needed to keep us going (actually, a lift down to our car was what we really needed, but as that wasn’t going to happen, a cup of great coffee was pretty good).

3. Thank god that Spain eats late. We finally arrived back at our hotel after 8pm. I am glad to say that M was struggling a bit too. By the time we had cleaned ourselves up, it was after 9. It would have been terrible to have done all that walking and not been able to get dinner.

Lessons learnt? I know what they are, but better not put them into print.

Just as well the walk was so good, and we had the chance to stop frequently to take pictures and rest our feet.