Sunday 2 February - Sierra d'Irta & Castell de Polpis

Weather: wall-to-wall sunshine and pleasantly warm when out of the breeze (or when moving through the hills)

What a thoroughly enjoyable outing I had today, in superb conditions - as the photos show. Not easy, taking me an hour longer than anticipated (the slowest bits were downhill; there were some incredibly steep sections on the descent with plates of ballbearings underfoot).

Here are some snaps:

I took the track the whole way up to the hillside Ermita today, rather than the shorter footpath, as the route I'd plotted was coming up a bit short and this seemed like a good way of adding a little on.

An unspoilt landscape and a seaview

First view of Castell de Polpis. This was the out-and-back spur off the circuit part of my route and involved a steep descent and associated reascent.

Closer to. The dirt track I'd walked in on is a public road. I'd not thought anything of meeting a group of four walking down to the castle, but it turned out they'd driven in; their car was just over the rise.

A tiny extra detour - I'd spotted what looked like a trig point as I'd passed on my way to the castle and as it was atop a summit, and there was a track leading to it, I visited it on my way back.

Plenty of signposts.

This was the start of the slowest going section, hemmed in by pokey bushes, but I'd not yet hit the steep stuff.

I think it was about here that I sent Mick a message saying I only had 5km to go. Thirty-three minutes later I sent another message saying it was the longest 5k of my life; I still had 2.5km to go! Yep, as descents go, it was a slow one. It did, however, push me to run everything even vaguely runnable once it got back to a more acceptable gradient. Incidentally, I'm sure this circuit involved three times more descent than ascent.

So many abandoned terraces. All that work to build them, and now they sit unused

I'll be revisiting parts of this route again in a couple of days time, this time taking Mick with me. 

22.5km, 750m