Getting on a GR in Spain
SPAIN is a paradise for walkers.
The climate plays a big part in facilitating our hobby, but it is the extraordinary mountain areas which can be found all over the country that make the it such a wonderful place for hiking.
Every province has a star mountain range (or three) – most with peaks that are higher than Ben Nevis. And we are lucky to have long distance routes – known as GRs (Gran Recorrido) – which run through many of the best areas and, with some good planning, can offer a spectacular couple of weeks or more of walking.
I have been extolling the virtues of the GR-11 on this page for many years. This is the coast to coast footpath which runs through high mountain areas of the Pyrenees. This route is made up of around 46 stages and more information can be found at this dedicated page travesiapirenaica.com/ gr11/gr11.php
The GR-11 is one of the most amazing footpaths in Europe. We have focused on a number of the stages, but the real challenge and adventure would be to spend two months doing the walk from start to finish – from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean. This is one of my ‘life ambitions’, when more time is available for such escapades, of course.
Whilst the views and sights on the GR-11 are quite simply awesome, people should be aware that this it is an extremely arduous undertaking, with long stages which pass through very high mountain areas. Serious planning and training – and previous sampling of the route – would be necessary before taking on the GR-11.
For people who are looking for something a little less arduous, then there are a number of other GR options in Spain. In recent times on this page we have highlighted the GR-331 in the interior of Castellón. This is a 166-km circular route around the Maestrat area. The route starts and finishes in Vilafranca and its 15 stages range between 6.9km and 15km. As far as long distance walking goes, this is far from difficult, but there is a reasonable amount of ascent to be done in some of the stages (553 metres in stage 13, for example). The route winds its way through a spectacular limestone landscape, with the ravines and escarpments.
More information can be found on this page – gr331.es
The awesome GR-7 is a different prospect. This footpath runs from Athens in Greece to Tarifa on the south coast of Spain. Not surprisingly this is the longest footpath in Europe and its stages in Spain alone cover some 2,600km, according to the website www.senderosgr.es
It’s an inland route which takes in mountainous areas in eastern Spain, but which keeps well away from the coast. Information on the GR-7 is rather ‘disorganised’ and in Spain it is left to each regional government or regional walking federations
to supply details on its stages.
The Catalan tourism authorities don’t overstretch themselves as far as the GR-7 is concerned. They tell us that it runs from Andorra to the Els Ports zone on the border with the Valencia region – and covers some 385km, ‘which can be divided into 24 stages’.
The Valencia region hosts some 600km of the hike via 36 stages. It’s not as tough as the GR-11, but the stages are longer than the GR-331. A typical day in the Valencia region could be stage six from Ares del Maestrat to Culla, with 18.9km to cover, which is estimated to take 4.30hrs. I have done part of this day and it’s a beauty.
The GR-7 winds its way down through the interior of Valencia province and into Alicante,
entering the province near Bocairent. It continues via Alcoy passing close to Menejador mountain (1,352 metres), then Onil and Castalla – and on through Petrer to exit the province after passing Pinoso and move into Murcia region.
We are told that the route is ‘currently being revised’ by the Valencia government, although it is not clear whether this involves rerouting any of the stages. The webpage www.senderosgr.es/Docs/GR7_Comunidad_Valenciana.pdf provides information on each stage, with distances and estimated times.
Alicante has its own longdistance route which runs through the whole province – the GR-330. More on this next week.
LAST week we started on the future simple tense, and I think I was engaged in my usual activity of trying to kid everybody it was really easy.
I do tend to do that, but you could call it simple optimism. I like to find the easy side of any bit of language and start from there, probably in the hope that you will be so overwhelmingly grateful that you won’t notice the difficult bit which I slip in towards the end.
So the optimist’s view of the future simple tense is that all the endings are the same for all verbs (that’s pretty good you know) and, well yes, there are irregular verbs, but then they are the same ones that exist in the conditional tense (that’s the next one we’re going to do) so you get two for the price of one.
Anyway, before we do that, I just wanted to make a general observation about the various options we have when talking about the future.
I made the rather obvious point at the end of the last article that we don’t actually know the future, so when we say that this tense is used to talk about a ‘certain’ future, this can only ever be true in theory. Reality is far more complicated.
If I were to ask you something like: ‘What will your grandchildren be doing in ten years time?’ it is highly unlikely that you would answer me with: ‘John will be a doctor and Mary will be a vet. Wayne will have four children and Shirley will live in Australia’.
No, you would probably answer like this: ‘Well, John would like to be a doctor, so we all hoping he’ll do that’. ‘Mary may be a vet but she might change her mind’. ‘Wayne looks as though he could end up with a big family and Shirley is going to move to Australia next year, if she can find a job there’.
Even then it sounds a bit weird but I’m hoping that you get the point.
Talking about the future is a complex matter, full of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, ‘perhaps’ and maybe’ with a few ‘I hope’ and ‘It looks as though’ thrown in.
So, when you want to talk about the future, you do not necessarily and automatically need the future simple tense.
You might need the ‘future of intention’ as already mentioned (ir + a + infinitive).
Sometimes the present tense is sufficient (e.g. El tren sale a las 4 – ‘the train leaves at 4’) and sometimes we need our next tense, the ‘conditional’ also called the ‘future conditional’.
This tense is the equivalent in English of ‘would’ instead of ‘will’. ‘I will go’ (iré) is future simple. ‘I would go’ is future conditional.
Why is it called conditional? Because its use implies the existence of a condition.
For example: ‘I would go to the concert … if I had time ; if I had enough money; if my parents let me...’
Having time, money or permission from ones parents are the ‘conditions’ upon which depends whether I can go to the concert or not.
This tense if really easy (really!) to form in Spanish as it is so similar to the future tense. The use of it is somewhat more complicated, but also there are a few tricks to get round it.
I’ll have to leave that till next week though. I hope you can contain your excitement.