We drove down to Denia from our campsite and headed for the Parc Naturel Mont Negro. Found the starting place after an extensive tour around the outskirts of Denia. Parked the truck at a small parking space at a reasonable height then started walking up the road through pine forest and other vegetation including carob trees. Had first noticed these on our bike ride a few days earlier, noticed them by their smell, a sweet almost vanilla scent, with a hint of chocolate. They grow wild here but are also grown as a crop.
I googled them to check they were indeed carob and learnt some interesting facts. Because they are fire retardent they are often used around crops as a fire break. The husks are what is used for the carob flavour as an alternative to chocolate, the beans are used as animal feed. Because the beans are all so uniform in size and weight they were initially used as a weight for the measure of diamonds, they all weigh very close to 195mgs (I think it was) which is equivalent to a carat of diamond. (Don't take my word for it all, check it out yourselves).
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| Carob trees |
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| Carob pods with beans |
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| Sorting out our route |
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| Scenery around the road we walked up |
We climbed up the hillside on a very easy, wide and well maintained track until the junction for the cave we were going to. It was up a steep and narrow track which zig-zagged up to the base of the cliff. The cave had been used by the Romans as a watch area (for watching he coast-line) and lots of finds have occurred over the years showing continued use through the ages by different peoples. There are three caves within the warren, but only the first chamber is accessible to the public. We foolishly forgot our torches so we went in tot he pitch black, nervously, and couldn't see inside the second chamber as photoed. The flash on the camera illuminated for a split second but not enough to focus on what was there, it did allow a photo for looking at later though. I put my walking stick in through the hole and sloshed it about, so we know there definitely was water in the cave which had leached through the hundreds of metres of rock above it over the decades (possibly centuries). You can't really see the water in the photo, but at the bottom behind the lip is a pool of water.
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| Base of the cliff cave goes in at right bottom corner |
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| Inside Cova L'Aguil (it has water in it) |
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| Looking out of the cave to Denia below |
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| Outside the cave |
We were going to stop for lunch up by the cave but it was a bit hilly for the others (as in quite steep drops, but lovely view), so we went back down to the junction of where the cave track met the main track, and sat on the wall eating our salad rolls and drinking water and lemonade. After lunch we continued on around the hill on the track, but after about quarter of an hour we didn't feel as if the track was taking us anywhere interesting so instead we turned around and headed back to the truck.
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| Terraced hillside |
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| View from the path |
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| Palm fronds |
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| Out on a limb (or rock) |
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| Ready, steady ...... |
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| go |
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| Butterfly on pineapple plant |
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| Watching nature |
After our walk we headed into Denia, had a bit of a look around the marina, looked at the fast ferry which travels to the Baleric Islands - toyed with the idea of a day trip- for Sunday, but decided not to book at that stage.
We drove back to our campsite, had dinner and usual post dinner family games before bed.
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