This summit felt hard won, even if on the map it doesn’t amount to much. Mostly lockdown blubber burn, but also some terrain challenges.
At the beginning of the climb, parking the car to the south, down a narrow lane off the Carpineto road, we met two speleologists who had been trying to locate a cave on this hill. They’d not made it to the top nor found the cave. I didn’t find one either.
The main part of the climb is straightforward, crossing the stream, climbing a little and traversing clockwise around the bottom of the hill to the east of it, to meet a fairly clear bifurcation where the path heads up the valley crossing the dry stream bed a couple of times before hugging more clearly the Monte Re side. Following this one meets the main path (left at the earlier bifurcation that presumably goes to the olive groves and back. Not confirmed), and continues along a good, and faintly signed path, to a series of flattened terraces and a semi-abandoned house.
Here we veer to the left to the ascent, weaving up with a fenced off area on the right. We were not sure which of the two tops here was Monte Re so we headed for the inner one first. (It turned out to be the more westerly top). Thrash through and up to minor summit.
Our mistake was to try to go direct along the ridge here to get to the highest point. The main problem being, as ever, the thicket. We did manage it after some swearing, passing through an abandoned ruin of a 10’ by 10’ building and trying to keep height whilst descending. Important here is to maintain west trajectory. For some reason had a terrible compulsion to orientate north.
Summits is a, for a hill called King Mountain, forgive me, a throne of quite rectangular stones that takes some twisting through swirling branches to reach.
Descent plan was head east, and a path at most points was offered. More actual SSE. There was a natural path here, but it failed to join the main path (taken up) in a clear fashion at any point, so some thrashing through was required.