I’ve a confession to make; when I set out to climb a mountain each month of 2017 I didn’t quite realise how many other hobbies I have to attend to and friends and family I have to see along with the inevitable life admin that comes with being an adult. This means that some of my mountains have become a little tenuous, September’s is definitely the most tenuous yet but bear with me.

Much as I love to be in the mountains, I’m also quite partial to a city break and September saw a visit to two of Spain’s best cities; Madrid and Seville (more on those later). Not wanting to let myself or any of my dear readers down I found the highest point I could in the city and took the Teleferico to reach it. I know, the shame. What has happened to me?? I’m on a city break using transport to get up a mountain.

Despite this particular collection of medium sized hills (most of the Casa de Campo ‘summits’ are more than 600m in height) having it’s own metro station it truly is a wilderness within the city. There are walking and mountain biking tracks throughout and it has wonderful views of the Madrid skyline and also looks out to the proper mountains that surround the city.

Even better you can take a Teleferico to get there. This in itself was a very unique experience, a long queue had formed as we had arrived just at opening time and it soon became clear why we had to wait so long. Firstly, in the manner of all good theme park rides there was a photo opportunity – a green screen background and very enthusiastic photographers led to a mini photoshoot for willing and quite a few unwilling but polite groups. Secondly, the Teleferico wasn’t the most technologically advanced cable car system in the world and moved at a typically Spanish pace of not very fast at all and occasionally just stopped. This all added to the charm and before long we were riding away in our own little bubble.

Resorting to take the cable car up a ‘mountain’ for mountain of the month

Teleferico to Caso de Campo

We decided against lunch at the cafeteria at the top and instead walked down to the Lago de Casa de Campo where we found a variety of lakeside restaurants with very reasonably priced menus. Three courses for 12 euros with a lakeside view was a delight on the taste buds and the pocket.

I would highly recommend a trip on the Teleferico if yourself in Madrid and I promise October’s mountain of the month will be suitably epic to make up for September’s offering.