A good turn
Much warmer on the southern side of the Pyrenees so, with a longish day's drive ahead made an early start, left side windows ajar in the van and gave the "cool towels" a preparatory soaking before heading south towards Cuenca. The first stretch was good, quiet main roads and motorway past Sabinanigo and Zaragoza, pleasant driving and countryside. Pottering along happily we were surprised when a small pick-up truck appeared alongside us and started pointing at the side of the van. We've all heard stories about this sort of thing, so were a bit wary at first but then a look in the wing mirror showed that one of the side-windows had slipped out of its hinge and was hanging by the catch! At 120 kph the wind could have pulled it right off at any time so we were very grateful to our good Samaritan, especially when he guided us into a wider than average stretch of hard should and then repaired it for us: what a nice chap!
We drove with the side windows properly shut after that!
Daroca
Years ago on another trip south we'd stopped briefly in Daroca. This ancient settlement, dating back to celtic-iberian times, has city gates and 4 km of medieval walls: we felt it deserved a second look with a little more time to spare.
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| A gate in the medieval walls on the way into the city (the GC car is nothing to do with us!!!) |
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| The diversion here meant that we got rather more of a tour of the town than we had bargained for! |
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| The route tool us up around various old parts of the town that we'd have missed |
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| We ended up here, by the gate at the southern end, where we found a space to park |
After coping with diversions we found a parking space, with a handy fruit and veg shop (
no tocar Jan!) and a cafe with good aircon (and buns) on the
Plaza de Santiago where we cooled off and restored our caffeine levels before going on to Molina de Aragon.
More castles than you can shake a stick at!
Aragon and Castile-La Mancha are castle territory par excellence, at times it looks as though every town has its crag, topped off with a castle!
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| This final castle (for now) is in Molina de Aragon where we found another coffee and bun stop |
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I rather liked the "Giraldo" (weather vane) figure
on top of the church bell tower |
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| Cute weather vane, isn't he? No idea who he is |
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| 12:30 - Coffee and a delicious custard filled doughnut in Molina de Aragon |
Whereas in France we'd been enjoying the cafe-au-lait, here in Spain we have, for many years, drunk our coffee cortado - a short coffee with just a bit of hot milk.
Revived, at least temporarily, we set off again "there must be a nice shady parking spot somewhere just down the road". It took us two hours to find it!
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| The shady parking spot at last! |
Late afternoon and we started on the final stretch to the campsite just north of Cuenca. There's quite a change in landscape now, with river valleys cutting through crags, unlike the rolling countryside we'd driven through from Zaragoza.
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| Slightly bent rocks, not quite curly! |
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| You should know by now that I can't resist curly rocks ;) |
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A quarry (field trip anyone?) shows the layer upon layer
of sediments laid down here |
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| Sheer cliffs above the river as we near the campsite. |
Our stop for the night was beautifully shady, and we found a pleasant, quiet pitch, once we had moved on from the one that was about to be watered!
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| An extra treat was a fellow camper quietly practicing on her harp. |
Sitting in the shade, relaxing, we were entertained not only by a harpist but by nuthatches and red squirrels! The plan for the morning is to visit Cuenca city before travelling on south via some Roman archaeology.
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