Potfest

Thursday - the alarm goes off at 5am and it's barely light. By 5-30 we're up, packed and ready for breakfast. There are swathes of mist drifting below us in the valleys and it's still quite cold.

 Quick hint for campers : when sleeping on a sloping hillside perilously close to the edge of a massive drop - it's not a good idea to just pop your rolled up sleeping bag outside the tent door while you attend to putting your boots on. Luckily Pollie stopped the inevitable and I now look forward to another warm snuggly night rather than a miserable cold one wrapped in a towel. After feasting on omelettes we were walking out of camp by 6-30am. We passed by another Bedouin camp as we headed down into the valley bottom way below. Very pleasant walking as it's still cool due to the mist, even as we struggle up the far side of this massive valley.

Our tents are somewhere way back up in the mist as we reach the dry wadi in the valley bottom - and slowly climb up to the escarpment at the other side of the valley. Pollie is not too happy on the top as the path follows the edge of the cliff very closely and it's quite a way down. We follow the escarpment for miles, seeing 5 eagles and 2 goat-herders along the way - one is playing a pipe and we hear the music very faintly carrying on the wind - the other herder we see on some rocks across the valley and we hear him bellowing at some misdemeanour by the goats.

Further along the route, although still quite some distance from Petra ,we start to see traces of the Nabatean civilisation - here an original piece of stone terracing probably dating back nine thousand years. All over this plateau are settlements, terracing, shards, flints,and fragments from the Nabatean culture.

The tents are pitched at the foot of these rocks on the flat plain in front. We reach them at about 2-15pm - it's been a long hard day. Over tea Eid expresses his concern at our route via the Monastery into Petra as there is an awkward section he feels might unnerve Pollie as it is very exposed above a drop. Luckily I have with me my book of walks in Jordan and we plan another route in from Little Petra and Beidah down through one of the 3 valleys avoiding the awkward section. A Plan B is usually viable! We've come this far together to fail at the last hurdle, and we plan to walk up to the Monastery area on one of our other days in Petra.

The campsite was in a wonderful setting, backed by a high canyon and I wandered around taking photos for an hour before dinner.