The following is a set of land, human, environmental and personal aspects that shaped my trip in The Empty Quarter.

Plan vs. Realization

The plan was for a 2 week, one way trip, starting and finishing at a train station, with very little, if any concession on uninteresting terrain on either end. I had planned for one resupply point on day 6, possibly a second one around day 10. In both instances, I’d resupply and keep going. I planned for no overnight stays in town.

In the end, it turned out a 9 day route with a different end point while keeping true to the rest of the planned idea. Regarding resupply, I went through the village on day 6 with still more than enough food to make it to day 9 but I still got a few supplies due to uncertainty at the time. It turned out I didn’t need any of these extras.

The basic, only meaningful reason for the change of plans was the pandemic situation. I left home with no outstanding travelling restrictions anywhere along the planned route but only one day later the country went into emergency status. Several regions started establishing region-wide lockdowns, banning inter-regional travelling. The trickle of such lockdowns affected one area in my route, after which I devised an alternative line to the originally planned end point. Eventually, this was also invalidated by further regional lockdowns. I needed to change plans again, this time including the finishing point to keep within the rules.

Hiking the Empty Quarter

I could have still hiked through the 2 week period by going all the way to my home region, a very interesting highland and mountain alternative, a part of which I’ve already hiked in the past, the rest I plan to explore some time in the future, but even this turned out non-advisable eventually: late on day 5, I connected the phone to the network only to receive communication that my father had tested positive for SARS-COV-2, although asymptomatic. After these news, I didn’t feel like being off-grid anymore and headed for the closest train line.

For the record, at the time of writing, my father has been declared COVID-19 safe, having had no symptoms.

Hiking in pandemic times

My hiking window turned out to be near the peak of the second wave for COVID-19 in Spain. It wasn’t ideal but there were many other factors that left me no other choice. To the best of my knowledge, I stayed within the rules.

This latter wasn’t enough to make me feel at ease. I wasn’t. I had intentionally planned for a very solitary trip where I’d expect to meet next to nobody on the trails with only brief, almost non-stop crossings of some small villages that I’d plan to go through if only for easy access to drinking water and, as outlined above, just one or two bigger towns where I’d resupply quick and go, all in an attempt to keep my contact with people to the minimum.

I followed the idea by the book but it wasn’t enough to feel relaxed even though I actually met very few people and nobody expressed any objection to my presence that I could feel. This included a brief conversation with a couple of rangers that I met late on day 2 when it was clear that I wasn’t going home for the night. They warned me about the upcoming restrictions but showed no further interest in my case, they were out for poachers apparently.

One of the tricky aspects of the restrictions and their relation to backcountry hiking is about the night time confinements that came into effect while I was out there. The idea was to avoid as much as possible the social interactions, both in pubs and private homes, by forcing people to stay at home during the night hours. I was clearly abiding by the spirit of the rule but who knows about the formal wording and its possible interpretations. I can imagine lawmakers were not thinking of backpackers. I was certainly not meeting anybody, neither moving around at night. Could my shelter be considered my home? The right to roam put to the test in trying times.

Betraying the original idea

I originally pictured this trip as a mostly cross-country route. The terrain and vegetation would allow reasonably easy progress and I thought cross-country would offer the best value, if only because it is not often advisable or even possible in many other regions. I’d depart with just a start/end point and a general idea of the areas I’d go through. There wouldn’t be many recreational trails anyway.

During the planning stage, I realized there were plenty of country tracks, the traditional paths in use for farming, hunting, forestry or old communication ways and that it’d be possible to trace a good route over them. I thought it’d feel safer to have a base route drawn in case the cross-country thing didn’t work out well. This was basically the end of that original idea: once on the trail it felt pointless to find my way around the bush when I could just follow a track on the ground with a matching smartphone screen. I still went cross-country at times for short-cutting or just for the fun of it but this was limited to relatively short sections.

Forestry works track in the Serrania de Cuenca

Easy cross-country in the open woods

I’m not sure how I feel about it in the end. Cross-country is definitely more special but the track network was thick enough that I didn’t need to compromise on the relative interest of the areas I hiked, i.e. I’d find a track pretty much perfect for the intended route in most cases.

Terrain

This is a region of high uplands and lesser mountain ranges around the Atlantic-Mediterranean watershed in Central-Eastern Spain. The plains around and across my route lie at about 1000 meter high and they’re often farmed for cereal with other, water loving crops along the riverbanks. Anywhere higher, be it mountain slopes or plateaus, it is heavily forested with native species well adapted to the dry season, namely pine, oak, holm oak and juniper. The woods are open enough to allow easy pass through.

I started and ended at roughly 1000 m. high. My original plan included a lower but mountainous and very interesting area with a low point just above 500 m. but, as it turned out after the redesign on the go, I stayed close to the watershed and never went below 1000 m. All the highland areas were above 1200 m. and the highest point, just below 1700 m.

The high plateaus

There certainly was climbing up and down involved but it wasn’t a rough route in that regard.

Season

This trip could be done year round and each season comes with its challenges. High summer would be tough due to the heat and dryness but still doable. Access to water is an issue year round anyway even though summer would be worst but the springs in small villages should be reliable enough. Deep winter could be beautiful if the weather stays quiet but beware of stormy conditions, they could make the trip very tough. Spring and fall are probably the best middle ground.

I hiked in late October in mostly stable weather except for the first few days with one strong weather system crossing the region on days 2 and 3, when it was freezing cold and unwelcoming. After that, nights were cold and damp, with temps going below the dew point every night. When the pattern turned to stability, the sunny days made for perfect hiking conditions.

Fall colours

Weather & Conditions

This is a land of moderate extremes. Roughly speaking, it’s warm in the sun and cold at night. Prevailing weather systems are westerlies but only the powerful ones will bring precipitation all the way here, something that may happen anytime during fall, winter and spring. Summer is stable, dry and very warm but thunderstorms in their most typical pattern are not uncommon. The altitude and distance from any seas make this region one of the coldest on average in the Iberian Peninsula.

I spent most of the hiking time among trees but don’t expect much shade from these open woods.

Open land

The low density of population and openness of the land is what attracted me to this area in the first place. One of the features that I expected around the open character was the absence of any fences. In this regard, I must say I found two sizeable fenced-out hunting grounds south of Molina de Aragon town on days 5/6. One of them was cutting across the track I was following and I needed to bushwalk around its perimeter. It didn’t impact my trip overall but no need to say I deeply disliked it.

The one fence

Roads and villages

Human population is thin but you’re never too far from a paved road or a village. Most roads will be secondary and lightly travelled, most villages will be very small. On my final route, I only crossed a major highway/railway corridor once, a motorway and high-speed train line. These are fenced so it’s important to plan for a possible over/underpass.

I’d hit the villages purposefully, if only for easy access to water supply. In normal travelling conditions, i.e. no public health issues, visiting them can be an integral part of a trip in the area. These little towns are nice and charming with some interesting architecture and a view of what life used to be in the old times.

Santa María del Val village

Water and food resupply

I meant to be as self-supported as possible to avoid contact with other people and started the trip with an insane amount of food that turned out enough for the 9 days I stayed on the trail. As the trip turned out, I hit a town big enough for a resupply only once, Molina de Aragon, mid-morning on day 6. The rest of the villages I went through were too small.

Water can be an issue. This is a rather dry region and most of it is limestone, which means little surface water. In limestone country, springs are key and they’re so important that they’re usually mapped but there’s no guarantee a spring will be running even if it’s marked on the topos. The best asset for safe drinking water supply are the villages because they’re usually built around a reliable spring, usually located in the main square. If not a natural spring, villages often have some free access outdoor tap connected to the piped water supply. I intentionally traced my route to hit villages on a regular basis just to get water.

Town square spring in Terzaga, Guadalajara

The rivers and streams that run year round are a tricky bet. They’d be fine only if very close to the headwaters. Despite the thin population, there’s farming around and the best land for crops is on the river banks. I wouldn’t trust stream water down from crops, not even filtered or chemically treated.

Springs

This is a dry region and most of it is limestone so water tends to filter down and resurface. Springs are so important that they’re even mapped. They even bear historical significance so not only town springs, also backcountry ones are built-up to ease water access. Some are really beautiful, so much that they deserve their own chapter in this story.

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Power supply

I set foot on the trail with no intention of hitting a wall plug for 2 weeks. That’d be no issue for most of my power needs except the navigation and communication device commonly known as smartphone. I had previewed such issue earlier in the year when any public house use looked unadvisable due to the pandemic so I started planning for self-powering: I got a dynamo hub for the bike and a solar panel for the hiking. I did my research and settled on an Anker PowerPort Solar Lite 15W:

My solar panel

This trip would be the first time I’d use a solar panel, ever, other than the early, basic functional tests at home. My expectations were not high. I’d had guessed solar power would have taken the hiking world by storm if it was really good, yet the user experience didn’t seem conclusive. I can now say first hand my experience has been rather positive. When family issues forced me to keep the smartphone connected to the network most of the time and the average battery drain went up to around 50% per day (from the usual 25% in flight mode), I’d recharge every night from a power bank that I’d plug to the panel the following day. 3 to 4 hours would be enough to top off the power bank from the solar panel. Conditions were good. Late October sun is not best but I was hiking mostly north with the sun on my back and I had mostly clear days.

The whole thing, i.e. Panel, micro-USB cable and a couple of small carabiners for easy attachment weights almost 400 gr. Even if it works, it’s still debatable whether it’s worth its weight, adding to that a power bank that you’d still need for a two step charging process as it’d be tricky to be charging the smartphone directly from the panel while using it. The power bank could be small though. It certainly was worth it in this trip due to the special circumstances, never mind how atypical, and it’d have potential for any trip where there’d be no possibility to use a wall plug for an extended time.

The idea of self-powering feels really nice but the key factor is reliability. If you’re gonna carry a wall plug and a big power bank to have a backup option in case solar does not deliver, it’s too easy to get to a point of diminishing returns. This trip was not enough of a test to declare solar as a solid option but at least it opened the door for me.

I’ll be doing a proper review of the actual panel together with my impressions at using it, upcoming.

Gear

Standard three season backpacking gear will perfectly do, lightweight stuff should be fine. There may be thorny and/or thick bush around but I never found a case where it was a problem. It was easy to find sheltered locations for the night, all my camps were under trees.

Sheltered camp in the oak woods

I carried extra power supplies and a wall plug in case the solar panel didn’t deliver. The redundancy hurt but it took some uncertainty off a trip with too much of it.

My base weight was a bit higher than usual. Most interesting is that since I eventually carried all my food from the beginning, it’s straightforward to state the whole of it on the gear list. This is the final breakdown, see that Total Weight figure:

 

Original vs. Final route

This was the original plan:

And this is what I finally hiked:

Do note the difference in map scales. The original route was almost twice as long as the final.