Peak Anxiety, Another Almendrón Fail, and A Million Pound Motorhome

Brace yourselves folks. Here it comes. Another meandering, aimless wandering through the dark and dank recesses of my mind! We are, of course, still 100% stationary on our leafy corner pitch here in Nerja. The skies have clouded a little these past couple of days, but it remains pretty warm and we’re able to get out running and hiking. Ju’s knocked out a half marathon this week, testing her bruised knees are self-healing nicely, and I’ve been out for a 24 mile run-hike in the mountains. More about these and other topics of the moment below…

Peak Anxiety

About a decade ago I was surprised to discover I have an anxiety problem. It was news to me at the time, as I sat in the doctors surgery explaining the tennis ball of fire which burned in my chest each day, and the pins-and-needle pains which ran across my chest and upper back, most of my waking hours. They’d sort of become the norm, and I only spoke about them after a panic attack which had me in the back of an ambulance one afternoon. Later on, when I thought back, I recalled times I’d struggled to keep breathing normally on long driving commutes across the country, feeling like I might pass out and having to pull into the motorway services to calm down.

Turns out I was stressed silly with work, for various reasons I won’t bother going into. I’m not complaining about any of this, the anxiety has been my friend in many ways, pushing me out of the office and onto the road, gifting me the capacity to run up beautiful mountain valleys or push myself to run lone 50 milers. That said, the anxiety can get out of control, and it has done these past couple of weeks.

We’ve all had almost a year of it now: the COVID-19 threat’s hung over us and our loved ones for all of that time. It’s waxed and waned, but it’s been there all along, pushing down on us, squeezing us, picking at our fears. The news has exploded out with a tsunami of information, the majority of it completely useless to us as individuals, little of it uplifting. Social media platforms, caring practically nothing for the content they carry, have presented some of the darkest, most untruthful, resentful and judgmental commentary out to audiences of millions.

Some folks have suffered far more than others, of course, but I don’t think anyone’s escaped mentally unharmed by all of this. Despite the gradual acceptance of mental health as a topic for open conversation over recent years, I feel it’s still a largely taboo subject. The fact every last one of us has been affected by COVID has, perhaps, not helped as none of us feel we can raise the subject: why should we get special treatment?

For me the symptoms of anxiety peaked (hopefully) last week. All the usual stuff was happening to me, although not as bad as it’s been in the past: tight chest, needle-like chest pains, difficulty sleeping, a reduced motivation to exercise. The judging voice in my head was running riot, self-destructive, arguing over and over and over again with complete strangers who’d felt the need to voice their negativity towards us (always written, never face-to-face) in the past.

Here in Spain we’ve far fewer restrictions on our day-to-day lives than the combination of a 3rd lockdown and a hard winter back home. That doesn’t help our families and friends though, and a sense of guilt has stayed with me these past few months. Selfishly we’ve rearranged our (previously cancelled) ferry home for 31 March (Santander to Portsmouth) to get maximum time away, all the while gambling that Spain won’t ‘go red’ before then. Once we’ve quarantined we’ll be directly affected by whatever’s happening at home, like everyone else.

Boris’ data-not-dates UK unlock roadmap announcement on Monday threw me a rope. Everything depends on the data, but assuming all goes well we’ll be able to sit outside with our parents as soon as we’re ‘out’ from quarantine, UK camping should be possible from a couple of days later (12 April), and (maybe) from 17 May outdoor running events like ParkRun could restart (oh my god!!! running alongside lots of other fellow runners!!! freaks me out a bit but excites me too). That final date’s two and a half months away, quite a while but close enough to motivate me to lose the addition 2kg in weight I’m carrying around, and get fitter and faster for racing again, something which serves to shove me forwards, easing my anxiety back down to ‘normal’, healthy levels.

I’ve also been using the free woebot chatbot app which someone helpfully suggested to me via this blog. It’s more than a bit weird, but it’s been very helpful, making it clear to me my thought processes aren’t unique to me, and helping me understand how my own mind works and undermines itself at times.

Another Almendrón Fail

It sounds odd to say in one breath my running motivation has fallen, and in the next to say I ran-hiked a 24.5 mile effort with a vertical mile of ascent on Monday. The thing is, three years of training have left my 48-year-old body pretty fit and strong, and 14 miles of slow running plus 10.5 miles of rough trail hiking doesn’t push it too hard fitness-wise. Sounds a bit bonkers, and I was quite tired the day after, but I had only a few muscle aches and ran again yesterday with no issues, which I was really pleased about. There’s a short video of the hike below, and photos below if you prefer that format.

The effort took me back up to the area around the Almendrón mountain, trying again to complete the circular route. This time I went in the anti-clockwise direction, which took me up a boulder-strewn ravine, the Barranco de los Cazadores. The path is marked with yellow dots and small stone cairns but still easily lost on the all-stone surface and I found myself in the odd dodgy position trying to regain the trail.

It’s pretty serious hiking up there, and I was carrying a couple of litres of water, food, clothing/emergency blanket, the maps.me in my phone with a back-up battery in my gimbal, and a basic first aid kit. Hiking poles would be very helpful, I had a walking stick which was invaluable, especially descending on loose rock. I also had the GPS track of the route on my watch and still managed to lose the route several times, having to rely on GPS to help regain the path which might only be a few metres away, but completely invisible to me. It’s not a straightforward hike and folks do get lost in these mountains for days/are never found.

Further along an old miner’s path has been built into the hillside, one side lifted with stones which must have taken a huge effort to lay. Avalanches of stones had swept the path away in places, apparently due to floods in 2007, but they were all old and new routes had been cut and marked. In places Almendrón and its ‘little’ brother El Almendrillo (the small almond, named for its shape when seen from the La Puerta viewpoint) were presented in profile in the sunlight above me, the size difference between the two huge and pronounced.

Emerging from the Miner’s Path the ascent is pretty steep with tough mountain plants growing over the trail, scratching my lightly-tanned legs white. It’s a good test of fitness, but this stretch of the hike up didn’t offer much opportunity to fall down any steep slopes, so I enjoyed ploughing upwards. Close to the top an off-shoot of path, marked out in yellow paint, took me to the Nido de Buitre, the Vulture’s Nest. I’d read this was a good viewpoint but was completely hit by the sight of magnificent ‘teeth’ of grey rock above a brutal vertical drop into the abyss of the Río Chillar canyon, far, far below. It took all my (admittedly limited) courage to creep up to the edge and take some photos. Other hiker’s pictures show them perched on the edge, the thought of it makes me feel ill!

Relieved to be away from the precipice, I backtracked to the main loop and started to continue around anti-clockwise, below the giant mass of the mountain. The peak of Almendrón itself is 100m or so scrambling/climbing from the trail and requires a far better control of vertigo than I have, no way was I going to attempt that. But even the hike on the trail again proved too much for me. The exposed, steep expanse of rock sweeping down and off out of sight hit me like a sledge hammer. Given how many times I’d lost the trail, even using my GPS gadgetry, I had no faith I’d not lose it on the crossing to La Puerta.

It was over 1km high in the sky there and several hours of hiking for rescue teams, a helicopter would probably be required if I fell and injured myself, so again I called it a day and retreated back along the Miner’s Trail. Hiking downhill was almost as hard as uphill due to the loose footing, but going down I could more easily see the trail and lost it less often, plus I’d some idea where it went and how hard the obstacles like old rock avalanches would be to traverse. I’d done 7 miles of running, and another 10 of hiking by the time I got back to the 4×4 track and started the final 7 mile run home. At least my backpack was lighter of water at this point!

So, failed again to complete the loop, but I felt I’ve given it a good go. I won’t go up there again without an experienced guide to get me across that final section, something to have a crack at once the COVID’s receded, maybe next year.

The Million Pound Motorhome

Channel 5 showed a programme called Million Pound Motorhomes on Sunday night (available to watch on catch-up here). We loved it! Each to their own when it comes to how they use their money, we choose to spend less than £20k on our vans, others spend over £300k. The programme did have a few cringe-worthy moments though! In every area of life exists snobbery, but we’ve not come across much of it the motorhome world that I can recall. Concierge Camping features in the show, a lovely-looking landscaped site with great quality facilities (and prices to match). One chap talked about using this particular site in a way which some (me) might consider a tab snobbish, especially in a time when we’re half-recognising the fact key workers like binmen, nurses, carers and cleaners are a tad more important than the level of wage they see in our country.

Overall the programme was a lot of fun. We’ve met lots of folks over the years with wagons costing £100k, £200k or even more. The huge UNIMOG-type ‘adventure vehicles’ are particularly expensive to buy and run, but an awful lot of joy to eyeball and enjoy when it’s not your wallet being wrung! We recall one incident with one of these £200k+ vehicles in a car park in Finland. Ju leaned on a chest-height tyre for a photo and a minute later the owner came running out of the adjacent museum. An alarm had been set off and notified his smartphone. He was OK about it, but we were stunned and wondered just how much he was able to enjoy his travels and soak up the world around him under those conditions? Once again, each to their own, and since the program Ju’s started following one of the participants, round-the-world expeditioners Sommer Travelling, a lovely couple in a converted Mercedes Atego 4×4 truck who have managed to get as far as Morocco this year (by driving from Portugal to take the ferry from Italy because the Spanish ones aren’t running).

And In Other News

The van roof is clean!!!! I’ve finally gotten up there and scrubbed it, having completely run dry of excuses not to. It wasn’t too bad, most of it came off with a sponge but there were a lot of fungus-dots across the front which took a bit more scrubbing to remove.

The 4G internet antenna was getting a tad dirty, but has cleaned up well, reminding me it’s been up there for 5 years now and hasn’t caused us any issues at all. The solar panel was pretty clean, although we’ve been on hook-up for two months so it’s not actually doing any work at the moment. The sat dish needed a bit of scrubbing, and as we’re using internet TV now (and we’re too far south for it work anyway) we never use it. It’s huge and it’s crossed my mind more than once to remove it, but if we did sell the van the new owners might want a dish, so we’ll leave it there I guess.

We don’t have a ladder fitted to the van. The only time we’ve needed access to the roof was to clear snow in the Alps, to fix the odd minor leak, to wash it and to replace a skylight, so we don’t bother carrying a ladder. I’d used a rickety old campsite ladder to get up, but it was too low to safely get back down. Thankfully our neighbours have a top-quality folding ladder in their fifth-wheeler (like these ones, but we’ve seen lots of other vans with telescopic ladders like these) and loaned it to us to get me down safely.

There’s not much else to report, you’ll be glad to hear! The COVID infection rates around this area remain low and are dropping on average across Spain. We still can’t drive across the nearby regional border to Granada, unless we’re heading for home, but we’ve no intention of moving anyway. There’s been no more press speculation of Spain being added to the UK’s ‘red list’ so we’ll just keep an eye out for any changes there. Unless something significant happens we’ll stay here another month then head quickly to Santander, get tested and get the ferry to the UK.

Right-o, I can think of nothing more to say!

Take care folks, until next time, Jay