Not York

You might have read elsewhere about BlogCon23, an informal gathering of bloggers that took place in York at the start of the month. Charity Chic wrote about it pre-emptively, as have C and The Swede, after the event. John has touched on it in his monthly photo post too. But I wasn't there this time, sad to say, because I had a prior arrangement that week...

Every year, at least until the pandemic, three friends and I would head off somewhere in Europe for a lad's long weekend of walking up mountains. I say lad's weekend like it's some 18-30 riot but it's never been like that at all - we're all too old for starters. No, it's usually a day of travelling, a day for a serious ascent, a day for some light walking or other recuperative activity and then a day travelling home. We've done this all over the UK, France, Andorra, Spain, Poland, Iceland and probably other places I've forgotten, and have been doing it since the late Noughties.

We've struggled a bit in recent years, for obvious corona-shaped reasons, but have still managed the odd trip domestically. But then last year one of our number had a severe stroke. And for "severe" read "could very easily have died". I'm not going into that, other than to say he's doing well now, still in rehab and reassembling his life. But his days climbing proper mountains are almost certainly done.

So whilst this year's trip felt bittersweet, the remaining three were all in agreement with Andy Dufresne - "get busy living or get busy dying". We got busy.

One of our number has climbed Kilimanjaro in his younger days, but the highest I'd ever been on foot was Coma Pedrosa in Andorra, at 9,656 feet. That was in 2014. I wanted to go higher, but was mindful of my body's continuing disintegration. A bit of research, however, unearthed a candidate in the quite pointy shape of Mulhacén in the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern Spain, at 11,424 feet. Crucially, for us, if attempted in the summer, no technical equipment (crampons, ice axes, ropes) would be needed - you can literally just walk up. But it is very steep, very hot and, after 10,000 feet or so, the air starts to thin out. Still, get busy living, right...?

To illustrate what I mean, here's an elevation profile of our route. Now I should point out that, as with most mountains, you don't start off at sea level - our start point, a car park at the end of five miles of unpaved, narrow, winding track, was at about 7,000 feet. So it sounds easy, right? But no, the heat, the steepness, the thinning air... The blue line overlaying the elevation plot is a relative approximation of our pace. You can see that at mile six it got so steep we almost stopped moving forwards (<1mph)... And it's not like you can go much faster on the descent either.

Anyway, it was ten hours on the mountain, with about eight and a quarter hours moving time. We basically went up and down the same route, as you can tell from the symmetry of the elevation plot, although the extra bumps on the ascent were diversions to bag two other summits, Prado Llano and the false summit of Mulhacén II. That's called a false summit because, on that route, you can't see the next peak beyound it, so people have thought it's Mulhacén, crested the summit joyously and then had the realisation that there was still a way to go. No fooling us though, we were better prepared.

Here's a panorama taken at the summit of Mulhacén, the highest point on the Iberian peninsula. If things work properly you should be able to click and drag this around for a proper look. As you can see, it was quite busy at the top - not Snowdon busy, but more people were there than expected. We'd hardly seen anyone on our ascent, but several different routes converge at the peak. Anyway, this is what 11,424 feet up looks like, midway through a fifteen mile hike.

What else can I tell you? Well, I discovered the nectar of the Spanish gods, in the brown-bottled shape of Cerveza Alhambra Roja. I shall be seeking out a retailer for that back in the UK. And I discovered that the staff in tiny rural Spanish restaurants give you progressively better pre-meal tapas if you keep going back day after day. Most of all, having made contingency plans in my head for what I'd do if my body wouldn't get me up the mountain, I was delighted to discover that there's still a little more in me than I thought. Aside from one tiny blister and some very tight calf muscles the next day, I didn't suffer too badly either. A relief to find that I'm not dead yet.

Better end on a song, I suppose, since that's what most readers come here for, rather than poorly-written rambles about an overweight, middle-aged man with dodgy knees hauling himself up what is still, in absolute terms, a fairly modest mountain. So whilst I may not be dead yet, here's Dead From The Waist Down, by Catatonia, all the way back from 1999. It's somewhere between excellent and awful - you decide. I quite like the middle eight, but your mileage may vary. Is Cerys a bit Marmitey, or do we all love her?