Benidorm Hikes - Part 2 (Sierra Helada, S.Cortina & Ponoig)

[gld73]

Puig Campana and Penyal D'Ifac were covered in the first part, but I managed to do good walks on every day, so here are the walks from the rest of the week in case anyone is looking for ideas for somewhere to get away from the Scottish weather! All day walks done from Benidorm, either walking from there or accessed with a short local bus ride.

DAY 5 (25th Jan) - SIERRA HELADA
Puig Campana is the Ben Nevis size mountain inland from Benidorm, but the other hill over the town, and literally right beside it, is the cliff ridge of the Sierra Helada, with a high point of 439 metres. There are a handful of walks shown on maps at the base, with the main one (or toughest and longest one) being the 8km traverse between the hill top cross (La Cruz) at the Benidorm end and Albir at the other end. In reality, the walk is longer than that because, unless someone is dropping you off or picking you up from the cross, you're going to be walking from sea level in Benidorm up to that at 237metre elevation (2 or 3km distance), and at the Albir end, most people would be getting the bus from further into the village/town.

My route was one to fill most of the day - 5km from the hotel up to La Cruz, 8km or so from there along the top, to the parking area at Albir at the bottom of the other end of the hill, another 2km from there to the lighthouse, and then walking all the way back too, but by a low route along the base of the mountain which was marked on the info sign as being a waymarked cycle route/pedestrian route. So around 30km with the highest point being El Governador at 438 metres, though actual ascent was a more than that with all the steep up and down bits along the hill.

The route up to the cross is a tarmac road, suitable for cars, and I did pass a few other people walking up to it from Bendidorm as it's a nice viewpoint. From the cross, I went back down towards the turrning/parking area and just before getting to it, turned off onto the obvious path. Like Penyal D'Ifac the day before, the slopes in the shade still had some dampness and that made the rocks on those bits slippy, but the route was clear all the way. It's not always one well defined path; it frequently splits, giving options a bit further away from the cliff edge if you don't like heights, but it never mattered which branch was taken, they all rejoined soon enough. Looking at the hill from a distance I thought it would be a flattish walk once up on the top of the ridge, but there were some surprisingly steep and significant descents and re-ascents.

Walking up the cross / La Cruz

The view of Benidorm from the cross. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder?!

View from near the start of the traverse - 3 other hills I did in the week (Sierra Cortina, Puig Campana and Ponoig)

Pano of Benidorm and Puig Campana

Between La Cruz and the Albir car park, I passed one couple doing it in the same direction as me, and a total of about 10 people doing it the other way, not many for somewhere so close to a mass tourist destination (though the age profile of tourists in Benidorm in January is pretty high, and mobility scooters are better suited for Benidorm's promenade than the sierra Helada). Reaching the highest point, which is close to the Albir end, El Governador (or Alt del Governador) is about the least scenic part of the walk as there is a transmitter compound there - the summit marker (with the usual graffiti-ed appearance) is perched unceremoniously just outside the compound fence on the edge of the cliff. There is a view down to the lighthouse though.

The route ahead, looks quite flat, but the sharp ups and downs are hidden here

You can see here that the path follows pretty close to the cliff edge for a lot of the route

At the high point "El Governador", the summit marker squeezed in next to the transmitter compound fence

Looking down to the lighthouse, with the side view of yesterday's walk/hill of Penyal D'Ifac in the background

It's pretty much downhill all the way from there to the Albir recreational parking area on a clear, rough path. At the parking area there are info signs and water taps (also toilets, though locked when I was there). The route to the lighthouse is an easy stroll after the Sierra Helada traverse, 2km on a hard surfaced track all the way, so quite a few people walking or cycling to it on this sunny Saturday. There are information signs about the history, geology, plant life etc along the route (in English as well).

The lighthouse, with the bike, pram and mobility scooter-friendly track to it

Back at the parking area after the detour to the lighthouse, I was a bit surprised to find the map showing the waymarked or suggested walking routes was not the same as the one at the base of the hill in Benidorm. The problem with that was that I'd not really noted where my return route started from. I had a wander around and couldn't find anything looking like a cycle route back, so headed in roughly the right direction along residential streets (not hard - keep Sierra Helada on your left and don't wander off too far right to hit a main road!). More by good luck than anything I happened upon the signs for the route at a street junction, and from there was able to follow the well sign posted route through a few more short street sections and then on to tracks and trails. Eventually I came to a T junction where there was no route marker, but by then the bulk of the return route was done, so I went left to stay on a track rather than a residential road, and soon emerged back into the throng of British pubs in that part of town.

Once you find the route, the sign posts for the lower level cycleway/path back to Benidorm are nice and clear

With my long route of about 29km, it took 7.7hrs in total, with somewhere just over 500m ascent.

DAY 6 (26th Jan) - SIERRA CORTINA

I wasn't having rest days, but tried to have a shorter walk after a long one the day before. It was also a Sunday which meant there were fewer (or no) buses going to some of the inland villages, limiting my options. Looking to Puig Campana from my hotel window (or anywhere in Benidorm) it's easy to ignore the low ridge of hill running right across in front of it, but on my way to Finestrat a few days earlier I'd seen a clear path going up the front of the hill at the south end, so assumed there was a good chance that it would give good access for a walk the full length of the hill - not as long as Sierra Helada, but with good views to Puig Campana at least. I bit of digging and found the hill/ridge was the Sierra Cortina.

Again, I walked to it from the hotel, though any bus to Finestrat would pass close to the start (get off at the roundabout next to Residencia Golf Bahia). From the roundabout, it's obvious which road to take and about 100m up the residential road, the path just leaves from it steeply uphill.

Where the path starts, no sign post or waymarkers, but easy to find

It's a good, clear, stony path which took me about 30-35 minutes to go up - no zig zagging to make things easy, it just goes straight up the front of the hill. Turns out that path takes you straight to the high point, where there's a cairn and cross, and someone has helpfully painted "Alto de Cortina - 523m" on it.

Clear path all the way up to the high point of the Sierra Cortina ridge

Good view of Sierra Helada, the route done yesterday

The path comes out right at the high point, with the backdrop of Puig Campana

....or you can look back the other way and get a view of Benidorm...

...but it's hard not to keep looking at Puig Campana with its >1400m summit

As expected, the view was great for being a fairly insignificant hill in the setting of the area, The walk along the ridge was on good path, gently rolling rather than steep ups and downs of all the hills I'd done in the area in the last few days and there were a few other people walking dogs or trail running, all Spanish. It drops down towards the end, where a track/road comes up to it (not sure if the public can drive up, the only car there was a 4WD police car with the driver sitting having his lunch in the scenic spot!). There's then another uphill bit to the final bump at the end of the ridge, where there are nice views to Ponoig (the mountain behind Puig Campana), Sierra Helada, Penyal D'Ifac and Sierra Bernia.

Clear and easy path follows the top of the ridge all the way to the other end (Sierra Bernia is in the distance)

The hill at the far end of the ridge has the obligatory grafitti-addled marker, though I don't think it's the ridge high point. It does a get view down to Benidorm and Sierra Helada though.

From some angles, it's difficult to see that the summit of Puig Campana is on the right as you look at it from the coast (the left summit looks higher), but the view here shows clearly which is the true summit

This viewpoint also reveals Ponoig, tomorrow's walk (another munro size hill, but hidden behind Puig Campana when looking from Benidorm)

The clear stony path ended there, but looking down to the network of tracks below and then onwards to the nicer route back to Benidorm than walking the length of the town that I'd done on the way to the hill, I figured there must be a way down. Right enough, a narrow path did continue, then go down the inland side of the hill steeply and through the vegetation on that side. It eventually came out onto one of the tracks which I followed towards the road - relatively nice roads to walk along at this time as they were huge wide boulevards by the Terra Mitica theme park,closed at this time of year and so practically no traffic. Flat or downhill stroll back to the hotel from there.

Steep path down that end isn't as clear as the main ridge path, but still reasonably okay to follow for most of it

Looking back up to the north / east end of the Sierra Cortina ridge

DAY 7 (27th Jan) - Mt Ponoig

Last full day before flying home, and another one with perfect weather. Hardly a cloud in the sky when I got up, so I was dithering between going up Puig Campana again but by the 'easy' path, or doing the full circular around the mountain, with a detour to Ponoig, the mountain behind (1182m). Got the number 14 bus up to Finestrat again, walked up to Font de Moli again, and set off in the clockwise direction again - but this time, instead of heading up the Vertical Km, I continued on the path around Puig Campana, the one I'd stumbled out on to after my idiotic descent route.

No clouds over Puig Campana today as I set off on the walk, so I was strongly considering going up it again, but from the path on the far side.

Although it's a circular route around the hill, that's not to mean it's flat, it was a steady climb - past where I'd rejoined the path on my Puig Campana day, past the Refugio wooden building and then on to the Coll de Pouet which is at 884m elevation. This is a signposted crossroad of paths and where I decided to go up Ponoig instead of back up Puig Campana - perhaps in the heat of summer I'd have done the Puig Campana path to stay in the shade, but in January, initially going up the sunny side of Ponoig was a nice option. (The thing that wasn't nice was looking back at the north side of Puig Campana and seeing the gully I'd inadvertently come down a few days earlier; I knew it had been horribly steep, but looking back across to it now, it made me realise just how sickeningly bad. The idea of well waymarked paths had lulled me into making a stupid mistake by following an initially worn route where others had previously missed the turn too. I need to concentrate more and daydream less!)

The paths heading in various directions from Coll de Pouet are clearly signed

Start of the path towards Polop village which has the branch to Ponoig (the mountain ahead) off it

Looking back to Puig Campana, the descent route I took was the steep narrow gully below the big rocky outcrop centre-right

The Finestrat leaflet I'd got at the Tourist Information place had a map of the main waymarked routes, so from that it showed the route of the path from Coll Pouet to Polop, and the branch off it to go to the summit of Ponoig. On the map, the branch was shown as the first one to the right, so it threw me a bit when I came to one which branched off to the right, but had signposts to Polop. I decided to continue on the original one up to the ridge top/pass, and that proved to be correct - just over the top of the pass, there was another path branching off right and going to Ponoig summit.

Path continuing up towards Ponoig

Although there was a junction of paths a bit earlier, this is the sign to look for, just over the side of the ridge - the path to Ponoig's summit is clearly indicated off to the right

The path was narrow and on a mix of gravel, scree and rock, with a bit of hands-on required, but the rock was dry so grip was fine. This path was on the north side of the mountain, so more of it was in the shade, and the wind was the strongest I'd had this week, so I ended up putting a jacket on near the top. The summit doesn't have a concrete cylinder on it, but that also means there's no graffiti at this summit ( a nice change). Again, fantastic views, of all the hills I'd done over the last week, plus Sierra Bernia, the impressive mountain I would like to have done, but getting to it by public transport would have taken a bit more planning than the ones I did do.

At Ponoig's summit. looking back over to Puig Campana

Bit windy at the summit, but clear and sunny :). Sierra Helada in the background (oh, and I see Penyal d'Ifac has snuck into the shot up behind my right ear!)

Sierra Bernia (which unfortunately i didn't get to this week) and Penyal D'Ifac

Benidorm is just out of shot down to the left. I never expected scenery like this so close to it

The views made me stay for a few minutes, but the wind eventually prompted me to leave, returning by the same route back to Coll Pouet. From there I continued the circular route of the mountain, downhill overall from the 884m of the Coll Pouet to the 352m of Font de Moli. Some of it is gradual downhill, occasionally steep downhill, at one point I lost the path on rocky terrain where it wasn't clear, so I headed down and seemed to rejoin it okay. Views back up to Puig Campana from all the different angles of the circular route make you appreciate what a fine mountain it is.

Back on the path around Puig Campana I got a better view of Ponoig's coast-facing slopes

Path is clear for most of the route (just one section a bit later where it drops down was a bit confusing)

Getting back round to the "front" of Puig Campana with the scree gully coming into view

Back at the Font de Moli, I felt a lot fresher than after my Puig Campana escapades, so again walked all the way back to Benidorm and my hotel. Ponoig and the circuit of Puig Campana was a really enjoyable route and a fantastic way to finish the week.

Can't believe how much I enjoyed my week in Benidorm Turned out to be a great destination for some hill walking in January.