'Let's walk up La Maroma', I said after I'd downed a few bottles of San Miguel in a Spanish bar. My friend, who had also sunk one or two, agreed that it was a superb idea, and so it seemed at the time. But it doesn't pay to take Maroma lightly. I mean, really, who in their right mind would set off to walk up a mountain without a proper map? Well me for one...and him.



Just to put you in the picture, La Maroma is situated in the scenic Axarquia region of Andalusia, at least it was the last time I looked out of the window. Standing at over 2000 meters, it bathes its feet in Lake Vinuela and is often snow-capped during winter months, but we didn't care about that; this was May. I'd just like to point out at this juncture that we didn't simply roll out of the bar and head straight for the mountain. Oh no, this venture was meticulously planned on the back of a cigarette packet.

We arrived at the campsite which was to be our base camp (might as well get the terminology right) before the sun, which was in itself no mean feat. Armed with water, a couple of sandwiches and a borrowed compass that had its east's and west's mixed up, we began the ascent.

We were following a sketched map that a guy in the bar, who claimed to be an authority on the region, had made for us. The first couple of miles weren't too bad, in fact the next few miles wouldn't have been too bad either, had we been heading in the right direction. We were looking for a pile of rocks that would indicate were we left the main track for the spine of a ridge, but it soon became evident that we had missed them, so we retraced our steps. We weren't too bothered about this, as the views from the side of the mountain over the lake and surrounding countryside were stunning, as is usually the case in this region. Eventually we reached what we thought was the right place to leave the track. Note here the words 'what we thought', because to put it simply, it wasn't.

It was a ridge and it had a spine but it wasn't our ridge or our spine. The Pine trees were becoming thicker and it wasn't long before we realised that we were on the wrong route, but hey, we'd come this far and it must join up with the other ridge sooner or later. Well, it was later, and the sun had got its hat on, and I was feeling a little weary, so we stopped to appraise the situation and blame each other for our predicament. That helped a little and we thought, this time correctly, that we could see the ridge we should have been on, so we struck out again; onwards and upwards; more onward than upward really because we had to drop down into a ravine and then back up again to reach it. The thing was, the sun may have had its hat on, but I hadn't. I'd left it on the ground when we stopped on the last ridge. Me, being bald, had to borrow my friend's hat, which resulted at the end of the day in his head looking like a number 3 pool ball, but that's alright; he has hair.

The fun and games didn't stop there; when we were up, we weren't. After some hours, we stood proudly on the top, but looking around us we saw another summit that was higher, so we dived down again and an hour later we were on the real summit? weren't we? No we weren't, there was yet another summit that was even higher, so not having come this far to be beaten (ah the British Bulldog Spirit eh!), we decided to go for it again. This time, joyously we were at the top of Maroma, and a walk that should have taken three and a half hours had been stretched to six and a half. We were tired?you hear me? We were knackered, but we only had enough time to take a few photos before it was time to set off down again. Incidentally, I forgot my camera too.

It took two and a half hours to get back down. I wanted to go directly to the bar, not for a beer, but to strangle the bloke who had drawn up the map, but my friend and my legs objected, so I went home and slept for a month.

Situated a few miles inland from the Eastern Costa del Sol and Nerja, The Axarquia region is a delight to visit. But if you do try to walk up Maroma, and I strongly recommend that you do, I have three little words for you; Map, Hat and Common-sense. Yes I know, common-sense isn't a little word, but I could hardly leave it out could I?