fishydreams

We heard a sad story when we walked the Caminito del Rey. It was told to us by one of the guides and concerns three local young men.

You don´t need me to tell you that young men are full of testosterone and bravado and they get up to crazy stuff from time to time. Sadly, there have been a number of fatalities here which have been reported from time to time in the press.

The “old” caminito was no longer maintained over many years but that was never going to stop people from coming here and walking it, often at considerable personal risk.

In 1960 the electricity people decided to replace the canal, then over 50 years old, with a pipe and so maintenance work on the canal was no longer carried out. As a result, it was no longer necessary to maintain the camino itself since it had functioned to provide access to workers. As the years passed, the path and the cables and other infrastructure fell into disrepair.

Young fellas, being as they are, had made a habit of visiting the gorge and using one of the cables which traversed the gorge as a kind of zip wire. I´m not sure quite how they did it but they were able to cross from one side to the other. It must have given them quite a buzz because there is a sheer drop beneath them.

For whatever reason three of these guys got it into their heads that they should all cross together instead of one by one as they usually did. Their combined weights were too much for the cable which gave way and the three men fell to their deaths.

You can see here a part of the old canal.

Here is the pipe that now carries the water. It crosses between two cliff faces here.

Close to here a cable passed from one side to another and people would use it as a zip wire to cross the gorge.