Kiwi Roaming

When we started planning this Europe trip walking the Caminito del Rey was top of my list so we planned this whole segment of our journey around coming to Málaga so we could take this walk. You might have heard of it before, the walkway suspended above a river gorge, sticking out from the rock cliffs. You might have also heard how dangerous it once was, how many people died on the old walkway and how challenging it is as a walk. I just thought it looked awesome and it is!

Our tour was an afternoon one so we met the group at 11:30am with sandwiches, bananas and waters in our backpack ready for our afternoon. First stop was a wee town called Ardales where everyone was encouraged to go to the loo, get some food and water before we got back into the bus to finish the journey to the Natural Park where the walk starts. We were impressed by how much renewable generation we’ve seen on the trips, solar farms as we left Almería, wind farms here and in northern Spain and the hydro we were about to visit. The landscape here is a mixture of orange and olive trees with small clusters of white buildings dotted around the hillsides.

It was over 2 hours before we started walking, 1 hour of driving and 1 hour of mucking round – queuing for our groups slot, walking from the bus park to the start of the track, getting our safety briefings, gearing up and finally onto the track. Our bus of 60 was split into three groups, ours an English speaking group. We’ve done a few English Speaking tours now and like all of those we were the only native English speakers in our group of 20. Our guide for the walk Anna was German and we stuck with her near the front, so she chatted, answered our questions and I think we had a much better experience as a result.

This track was originally built so the King Alfonso XIII of Spain could officially open the hydroelectric scheme when it started operating in 1921 (they started building it 20 years earlier) so they built him a special walkway to get there, and an observation platform – hence the name. But it wasn’t well maintained and became dangerous with sections falling off and casualties so they closed the track but people still went there and casualties continued to occur until about 2000 when the government decided to rebuild as a tourist attraction (which reopened in 2015). You can still see the remnants of the old walkway along the route, rusted and certainly not as well anchored into the rock as the new path.

It is absolutely spectacular. Pushed up from the sea floor by an earthquake long long ago the formation of the rock is so different to anything I’d ever seen before. The cliffs are gnarly and full of wee indentations and caves. We even saw a few fossils, one of which is covered in a perspex cover to stop people touching it.

The other aspect to comment on is the sensation of walking along a path that is tethered to the rock, suspended, with nothing below you. If you are scared of heights in any way shape or form – do not do this walk! but if you’re not it is really amazing.

Along the way we learned a bit about the flora and fauna. There were griffin vultures flying hundreds of metres above our heads but we could see their impressive wing spans, apparently they are fed twice a day! we also saw goats, coy in the aqueduct, poisonous plants and medicinal ones, carob trees and there were pigeons everywhere.

Towards the end of the 8km hike you cross a suspension bridge which is 110m above the river far below. There are signs saying there shouldn’t be more than 10 people on there at a time but nobody enforcing that so it certainly moved with people all walking across at the same time. I video’d the experience cause it was unique.

In preparing us for the walk, and in the info when we booked, we were told the last part is tough, steep and challenging so be prepared – in actual fact we found the only tough aspect the steps we had to climb were made with a single deck board each so they were narrow and with a sheer drop below we had to be very careful navigating them. Once we reached the end of the cliff face part of the walk we were able to take our hard hats off, this was also where the tour ended so we could take our headphones off too and walked the last 2km to a village set up with wee stall shops so you could get a drink or something to eat or merch.

Loved the whole experience! and strongly recommend if you get a chance to take this hike then do give it a go.