El Canuto de la Utrera, an extended version - Manilva- Casares -Circular Walk

We parked our car at a relatively small car park next to the information panel of this walk, that starts at a height of 300 metres.

From here a wide gravel track goes gently down towards a small settlement.

Somewhat further on we went through a gate and followed the white-green signposted track into the gorge. At first the track is easy, giving you very nice views of the hills towards Bahia de Casares and the Mediterranean.

Having passed a broad stretch of meadow with grazing sheep, the track becomes smaller and narrow and you go down into the gorge until you reach a height of 50 metres. All the time the views are very impressive. One might have the feeling that huge boulders or slabs of stone might come down but the atmosphere is serene and nothing that dramatic will happen of course.

Sometimes the going is quite laborious especially if you have short legs as you have to manage yourself down huge boulders and sometimes the path has been partly knocked away by falling rocks.

Twice you will be able to follow the old Roman road across broad slabs of stone.

All the time the views are stunning. There are no words to decribe the way nature looks like here. It really is amazing and unbelievable that at such a short stretch from the crowded civilized 21th century coast you will find yourself in a place like this, overwhelmed by the primal majestic forces and beauty of nature.

Leaving the gorge you will arrive at a crossroads that you could also reach by car via the Pr-A162 coming from Manilva. From here you go to the left alongside a stretch of private property passing the Ermita San Adolfo until you arrive at the most extroadinary bathing place.

If you leave the track and go down to the broad field a few metres beneath you, you will find remnants of Roman baths and when we reached this place there were people sitting in the sulphurous water.

Somewhat further you will come upon a fork in the road where you should take the left fork if you want to avoid going back and forth as we did.

About a kilometre further on the signposted track (green-white and yellow-white) the path goes into the riverbed which it follows for about 700 metres where there is a fork in the bedding.

At first we took the left fork of this completely dry bedding and worked ourselves up, past and along the stones, many of which are extremely smooth, until we came upon an almost natural bathing place where nature has also formed a kind of canal into the rocks.

Having seen this, we went back to the origial path and started to go up again along this now narrow and very beautiful track that will give you some very nice views into this gorge when you get higher; eventually you will reach a height of 125 metres when you get out of this gorge arriving at a a gravel road the Sl10- Pr-A162.

Here we took the pasarela across the Rio de Manilva and started the final part of this walk along a broad track that took us back to A-377.

From this part of the walk you will have great views on Casares and will see how beautifully it has been built upon the rocks.

Having reached the A-377 it is a 2-kilometre-walk to the parking place in the company of quite a few wind turbins, but with lovely views on the mountain ridges to the south.