A short walk to the beach

Gran Canaria. Christmas time. Outdoor types trying to just chill out and prepare for hard training to come. It was never going to work.

Puerto Mogan - the nicest, most middle-class resort on the island. We tried a day on the loungers but the next day dawned cloudy. I'd read about Playa Venegueras on a blog somewhere, so our hardly-used Kompass map came out. hmmm..about 5k each way. Fine.

The path's a road winding in hairpin turns up the valley side. They have lots of roads like that in GC, but this one has no traffic. Blocked off at either end, as denoted by little red dumb-bell shapes on our map.

You see a fair few folk walking and running up the first stretch from the main road. There's a viewpoint on the clifftop from where you can spy the pretty harbour and yachts, and also the nasty shopping centre development and failed would-be nasty developments further inland. A nice walk of a morning. Carry on though, and it started to feel rather 28 Days Later.

A well-enough maintained road with scenic aspects. No cars, no houses. What got me the most was the ornamental trees and blooming shrubs which had been planted at regular 10-metre intervals, making it a pretty winding avenue through the scrubland and gorges. The trees even have their own irrigation system. We passed a couple of failed fincas, just their foundations and some hosepipe remaining. Surely these trees weren't just here for the walkers and cyclists, who numbered maybe 15 at most.

But who am I to complain? Easy route-finding, shady spots to stop (and pee behind), wildlife flitting and scuttling here and there. After a while we realised that it was probably more than 5k to the beach. It took us a while due to bird and lizard-spotting stops. Just as we started to give up all hope of seeing the beach, we made a winding downhill down a ravine-side, with spectacular mountain views on the horizon...and spied the beach. Mucky brown, rocks, a bombed-out looking building. Buh.

My hopes of an enterprising local selling ice-cold refrescos dashed, we headed along the drainage canal to the beach, via almost a wrong turn into someone's tumbledown garden.

It looked better close up. A calm bay with black sparkling volcanic sand, pebbles, and a rocky cove to shelter in. The wind had got up, and to our minds it was too cold for swimming, so we sat down and ate our picnic then went exploring the rocks, also black, ages-cool lava flowing into the sea.

On the way back we had fun looking at the songbirds and the best funny sign we've seen for ages..