Roads and rain.

We haven't seen the digger since last Saturday and are not holding out much hope of its return because the road from Cadiar to Torviscon has major problems, both with rocks and mud and also it would appear to have structural problems. 3 diggers plus lorries are working on different stretches of road in an effort to keep it open, some places are down to less than a lanes width - the white lines are under the mud - and there is a stretch where the outside edge has washed away into the valley and the outside of the road is suspended in the air and now there is a crack in the tarmac about 15 metres long. Surely it won't be long before the road has to be closed.

The soil has also washed away under some concrete tracks leading up to cortijos and J said there is a concrete water deposit in a similar situation - its foundations are exposed and its wall is in the air!! So by comparison, our pista is relatively unimportant, I suppose we will have to wait for the main work due in March. At least we can walk to cars and then get to shops, people who live along the Torviscon road could soon be far worse off.


The work the digger did do here has largely been undone by rain on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. The soil didn't have time to dry out, be driven on and compact and now most of it is either boggy or has washed away. The track higher up (picture on blog of 9th January) is getting steadily narrower, this is what it's down to today! (It was a bit overcast this morning, hence the gloomy photo) If you compare the 2 pictures, you can see the grass growing up the middle of the track has gone, it's sunk down (again not very clear on the picture,) and it's narrowed from over 2 metres wide to about half a metre. Next to it is the concrete acequia that sends water down to Yator, so we can always detour along that and join the pista again further down.

To put it in some sort of perspective, a house built on the slopes above Berchules, which took the owners about 5 years to do, was completely washed away in the rains. They have lost everything, furniture, animals, the lot and have gone back to Germany.

Another property below Valor has suffered a similar fate, not sure who owned it.

There are houses built below Orgiva and Trevelez in the pretty river bed areas which were abandoned as the waters rose around them.....100's of main roads have suffered structural damage and an unknown number of pistas like ours.

So we're not badly off here - think of the lack of wear and tear on the tyres, the petrol we're saving, and how much fitter we're all getting!