Westward Along the Senda Litorial
Yesterday I walked the Senda Litorial, or in english, the Costal Walkway. I walked west for about 3.5 km and then up the riverside walk to the pedestrian bridge over the Guadalhorce River. This river marks the limit of Malaga’s urban area. The river´s name has it´s origins in the area’s history. Guadal comes from the Arabic meaning “sandy bog,” which given the flat land surrounding the river, makes sense. For sure it is a flood plain and so it has been largely left as a naturalized park with lots of paths, a few small footbridges, and one big pedestrian bridge. The City has added a big berm on each side of the river to hold back the “sandy bog,” which, if left to nature, would spill much further than it does today in times of heavy rainfall.
The park is mostly just floodplain, left to grow wild. There are no encampments of people to mar its surface-just grass, shrubs, a few palms and rock along with sand. Incidently, I’ve seen very few homeless people here, despite the year round lovely weather. Instead I’ve noticed a lot of seedy RVs left parking on the edge of the city here near the beach. A very wide swath of land sits between the two manmade berms which run parallel to the river’s path; keeping any flood inside its boundaries. I understand that is a great area for bird watching. I’ve walked these river banks a few times, and I will for sure explore further in the coming month. Maybe I’ll even get to see a flamingo.
The sea side promenade that spans either side of Malaga really capitalizes on their waterfront heritage here on Spain’s Costa del Sol. One internet source states that there are 25 km of sea front promenades accessible from Malaga. While the city is not just a beach tourist town, that is a large component of their economy. So when they reconstructed and refurbished their port and waterfront area on Spain’s Costa del Sol over the last I don’t know how many years they did/are continuing to do it right. Having researched this a bit, there is a promise of even more glory: “The Senda Litorial de Malaga (Malaga Coastal Path) is a projected 160 km path following the entire coast of Malaga province from Manilva to Nerja. Once completed, this long-distance path will be a major tourist attraction for the Costa del Sol, and for Andalucia.”
After I got to the end of this piece of the seaside promenade, (it resumes on the other side of the riverside park), I took the Senda Litorial (coastal path) alongside the river on its route through the park before it continues sea side on its way toward Torremolinos. After exploring the paths, it was time to retrace my steps home.
About Malaga:
From Wiki: With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia and the sixth most populous in the country. Aside from tourism, the City is also an economic hub, being Spain’s 4th largest city in terms of economic activity, mainly in construction, logistics, technology and transportation. It has a major technology hub. Most of the international tourism in Malaga (the Spanish province within the autonomous region of Andalucia, not the urban municipality or city of the same name), is in Torremolinos, on the other side of the Guadalhorce river, which was redeveloped in the 1950’s and 60s. (It was known as “the most ‘cosmopolitan’ and gay-friendly place in all of Spain” in the 1960’s according to wiki. The Port of Malaga is the Iberian Peninsula’s second busiest cruise port. The Airport, located close to Malaga, just north of the Guadalhorce Litorial park, (I could see the air traffic controller’s tower from the pedestrian bridge over the river), which is served by a commuter train travelling in both directions up and down the coast, making it fast and cheap for tourists to get to their beach-side destinations as well as into the centre of Malaga.
Peggy's Bucketlist Adventures 