So first up was a trip to Castell de Castells to check out potential climbing venues. Not only did we (me & Don) find these, but also some bouldering and a fun ascent of the canyon below the crags.
Are the crags any good? Well I didn't climb any of the routes so can't comment fully. But it certainly looks good, albeit mostly harder grades! There's definitely a few routes for us mere mortals, and the scope for future development is extensive.
Bonuses of the crag are: it's walking distance to the village (shops, bars, etc), has wonderful views, and is likely to remain nice and quiet. There are caves underneath some parts of the crag, so it's easy to escape the sun and these are good places to store bags, keeping lunch and drinks cool 🙂
After lunch back on our sunny terrace, I left Don to snooze away the afternoon whilst I ventured out to the Sierra del Migdia, only a 15 minute drive from our winter base in Llosa de Camacho.
Parking up behind the village of Tormos I set off along the PR route zig-zagging up the hillside. The path clearly goes through a well used bouldering area, some of it even looked doable! The mountain throws down a narrow spur of rock and soon I arrived at it's base. This was to be the start of this afternoons adventure.
Not knowing anything about this ridge I made my way towards the rocky crest, passing a couple of green way-markers along the way, this was reassuring. I started just left of a small cave like recess, this makes for an obvious feature to get established.
The rock was almost all solid and razor sharp. As this ridge is so close to the Segaria ridge which is similarly sharp, i'm going to call this rock 'Segaria sharp'! With water worn pockets and holes everywhere, this rock is a delight to climb on. The route seemed to flow easily and felt straightforward to follow, mostly being on a crest. I'd say there were a couple of short sections at grade 3 but mostly was more like grade 1/2.
I descended North from the first major col, but there is more scrambling further on, looked about grade 1. Descent was through some rough ground towards a ruined building. Once at the building a cairn marks the start of a good path (PR route) heading East back to Tormos.
The round trip for this scramble as a solo scrambler was 2 hours 30 mins today.
We're based out here for a couple more weeks yet and will be back again from around October time. If you'd like a guided day on a great ridge scramble, mountain walk, or rock climb, please get in touch anytime and let's make it happen.
And for the summer months we'll be busy guiding in the beautiful Lakeland fells, where we can make your ideal day come true.
Thanks for reading.
Mark
