RAMBLING Rambling for this season has now come to an end but here are a few of our May walks which, due to the easing of restrictions, was a nice change and allowed us to ‘stray’ further from home and explore less well known areas. Castellar de la Frontera The terrain, overlooked by the old fortress at Castellar, was very varied, from brushing through tall prickly undergrowth (scratched legs for those of us in shorts!) to striding across glorious flower-filled meadows , then scrambling a short sandstone hill to reach a lovely high ridge, with fantastic 360 degree views, where we were very happy to sit and have our picnics in the shade. A lovely stroll skirting the lake (reservoir?) in the afternoon just about finished us off (literally as it was pretty hot ) but again, the terrain changed dramatically with a “ tree graveyard” and a boulder strewn landscape to negotiate until we climbed up back to the roadway to return to our cars (total distance almost 12k). Flora and fauna were abundant and much appreciated - we were constantly surrounded by hundreds of beautiful butterflies (Monarchs I think, mostly) Eagles circling over the lake looking for fish, a lovely friendly donkey who came running to his fence to greet us (sadly we had no fruit to give him) and a particularly evil - looking red-striped oil beetle all grabbed our attention. We later found out that the beetle is highly dangerous, thankfully none of us wanted to stroke him!
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