Those of you who know me well will have me down as a bit of an app junkie, which is a fair assessment. Our new favourite climbing website is TheCrag.com https://www.thecrag.com/ which is also available in the TopoGuru app. We started using it in Croatia where it was really handy, and it’s proving a winner in Spain too, with Cucala being the biggest “win” it has served up so far. It gets a mention in our fairly recent Castellón guidebook, but not in a way that would actually encourage you to go (not if you’re a “mere mortal” anyway) but TheCrag has 95 routes, 2/3 in our sweet-spot and clearly has it down as a winter venue.
That’s all the encouragement we needed! The access is via a dirt road with a couple of lumpy bits, and we were glad of our 4×4 truck, but were impressed to find a GB-registered Vito campervan had made it to the parking spot.
The crag splits naturally into three chunks. The left hand end has around 40 routes from 4c to 6c, the middle a couple of dozen 6b to 7b, and the right side has another 30 mostly 7s and 8s.
Wandering up to the crag we were even more surprised to find that the intrepid Vito owners were Kev and Jen who we’d last met in Terradets on our first extended RockAroundTheWorld trip in our then new van
Readers will note that RockAroundTheWorld was more succinct in those days – mobile data was more expensive!
Here’s Jen on a very Pembroke-esque El Profanador de la Cantera, 6b
Here’s Helen on Que Hay Denuevo Viejo, 6a
Things get a bit more uphill into the middle section,
… but Malaspina, 6c+/7a sneaks through the worst of the steepness via a thin groove before launching out leftwards over a roof.
Here’s a couple of shots of Jen on the same route taken from the parking as we were leaving the crag.
Great find, and one we’ll come back for.
Talking of “Great Finds” and “coming back for more”, we finally got around to revisiting Araya
We had the place to ourselves in 2017 when we stumbled upon it with Justin and Chris, but it’s now well and truly on the map judging by the dozen or so Spanish teams – albeit on a sunny Saturday. It remains a stunning crag!
On our previous visit we’d focused on the left hand orange wall, so decided to try a couple of routes on the far right this time.
Time wasn’t on our side, as the howling wind at the campsite had kept us huddled in our pits long after we should have been on the road, only to arrive at the crag to find it sheltered and toasty, so I jumped on Golum Go Home, 7a. Not a very sensible warmup, but you know that feeling when sometimes a route just screams out at you… Anyway, it was absolutely brilliant – 35m of tenuous, balancy movement. You can just about make me out nearing the top in the shot below:
… and a couple of pics of a local chica nearing the crux, taken just afterwards…
Further left, Jungla Toxica looked to be an equally inspiring if more disjointed line, with an initial 20m or so of fun juggery followed by an obvious crux through a blank overhanging wall split by a thin, pockety crack. Surprised and chuffed to get through this, I figured the remaining 15m would be a romp to glory, but a final leering roof had other ideas. Much puffing and panting, and a bit of cursing, saw me to the chain, having spent a lot of energy contemplating the potential lob off the final committing move. Lowering off, a curly haired local came over to congratulate me on a “great fight” 😎
Walking back through the chest-high rosemary, with the departing rays having plunged the crag into an icebox, we resolved to make an earlier start on our next visit!
RockAroundTheWorld 