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A client travelled on our 'Wolf-watching in Spain' holiday and submitted this entry to our writing competition.
Iberian Wolf by Bret Charman
I was at Stansted Airport on a March morning for the start of my trip. When I had shown the holiday ‘Wolves and Bustards in Rural Spain’ in the Naturetrek brochure to my husband he said that it was ‘a come on’ - unlikely that I would see a Wolf and, furthermore, the people would be nutty.
As an ordinary nature lover I felt apprehensive. Would I be out of my depth with nerdy naturalists? In the departure lounge the two leaders, David and Lee, introduced themselves. They were friendly and appeared normal, apart from telescopes poking out of their rucksacks.
At Valladolid in the north-west of Spain I met the rest of the group who had travelled out in the aeroplane. From the car park we saw White Storks nesting on a bell tower. Our leaders ushered us into two minibuses. They each drove a vehicle for our 3-hour journey to the outlying hills of Cordillera Cantabrica. The huge cultivated plains were dressed in hues of ploughed winter brown and a sprinkling of fresh green shoots.
After about an hour into our journey we stopped at Villafafila and saw huge flocks of Great Bustards. Through the telescope we had a grandstand view of displaying males with their huge ball of white tail feathers. Then we took a detour on a dirt track. There was a huge, red-brown mud brick dovecote as big as house. The tame doves that had provided guano for fertilizer had long gone and been replaced by a large colony of wild Lesser Kestrels flying in and out of the windows.
Then off to our hotel in Villanueva de Valrojo. It was a honey stone building on raised ground. The landlord showed us our rooms. I was standing in the bath just about to shower and the lights went out - complete blackness. Before daybreak the following morning the lights went off again. Later the reason became clear. The tour company advised taking a kettle to make hot drinks before our cold early pre-breakfast wolf watching trips. Our kettles overloaded the electrical system.
Our hotel housed the only bar in the village, where every evening the loquacious locals gathered. One of them, a forestry warden was able to tell us where the wolves were.
On our first daybreak trip we parked the vehicles along the side of a track in Boya and walked to a high view point. In the distance were the snow-capped mountains of the Cabrera which were illuminated by the rising sun behind us. In front were pine trees and scrub still in the shade of the surrounding hills. Several people set up their telescopes to scan an area just below the forest. The rest of us searched eagerly with our binoculars. Alas, no Wolves, but we were able to view their future food through a telescope. I watched young Red Deer stags practising rutting. Later a family of Wild Boar trotted through an open area then a Fox, silvery in the sunlight.
One afternoon we drove to Fletchas a pretty village high up a valley. We parked in the road near a stone cottage nestling at the side of a hill. The front of the house was surrounded with rosemary, around which fluttered colourful butterflies, Holly Blues, Large Whites, fritillaries and Carpenter Bees all feeding on the flower nectar. Nearby an old man was ploughing a small field with a pair of oxen. Another day we went to Ferreras de Arriba, near the hotel, to see old stone corrals, where sheep used to be protected from night time prowling Wolves. While having our picnic outside a corral an Ocellated Lizard came out of its burrow to inspect us. It was a sausage-sized dinosaur with a green loose-fitting skin so we all had a good view and took photographs.
One morning we went along a forest track and sited Wolf footprints, where the recent mud had hardened. The footprints next to those of a Fox were huge. We also spotted old droppings, reminiscent of big, pale sausages, filled with Wild Boar and Red Deer hair. We were on a Wolf path but no visible Wolves.
On a Wolf search one of the telescope group whispered, ‘I think I have one.’ David confirmed it and located it in his telescope and invited me to look. At first all I could see was vegetation - mostly tree heather that grew taller than animals. Then it emerged out of the dark scrub into a light clearing. The morning sun lit up its dark grey head and shoulders and then its honey-coloured body, as it loped across the telescope. It was my first view of the Wolf. The climax of a shared, thrilling search.
Read more about our 'Wolf-watching in Spain' holiday.