Shevil Israel, Day 2

Slopes of Mount Carmel.

The first real day of walking, and certainly a full one with twenty-five miles to do.  After an hour climbing through the desirable districts of Haifa I reach the Mount Carmel National Park, and immediately decide it was a good idea to come here.  The view is glorious, spring has come and the hillsides are covered in wild flowers.  Funny to think it was snowing on me yesterday morning.  The paths are well maintained, and I'm sorry to leave the park, not least as I now have several miles of busy road before joining the INT.

The trail makes itself felt with a steep climb, interestingly there are no signs, rather there are orange, blue and white 'blazes' painted on rocks every fifty yards or so.  Soon I'm in Ein Hod, an artists community charmingly decked out with examples of the residents' work.  Better yet it has a store where I buy cheese, biscuits, beer and chocolate...

With an INT blaze.

Sadly after lunch things go downhill.  Basically my route is South along the coast, but perversely the INT regularly detours off to find a rocky scramble halfway up a hill.  The blazes are little help, I rely on my GPS and still keep going wrong - a couple of times I find myself on a nice flat track alongside the banana plantations at the foot of the hill, not sure why the INT couldn't follow these.  Progress is slow, and when the sun sets I still have a long way to go.

At least now the route is along dirt roads through forest, easy enough going... The trees mean that the full moon isn't much use, but my head torch works well, even when I'm faced with a sudden mad scramble up a cliff, in the dark.  On all sides I can hear the howling of what I assume are dogs, in these darkened woods though they sound very like wolves.  Finally I reach Zikhron Ya'akov, a nice little place.  I get food from of all things a Domino's Pizza, and a few pints of Guiness from an Irish pub which is having a fancy dress disco - the Israelis do seem to love their fancy dress.  Refreshed, I walk back to the trail and pitch my tent.  The wolves are still howling...

Stone age habitations.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.