18th August 2009
Well we are now in Spain. We crossed the border on Saturday morning after spending the night in the Pyrenees by a large reservoir. The day before we wound our way through narrow gorges and up steep roads to a large plateau where we came across the large dam and found a place to park overlooking the water towards the ski resort areas and the ski lifts.
Saturday we crossed into Spain quite near the Andorran border and came to a roundabout that was blocked with traffic. They were all heading for Andorra and we were heading in the other direction, but they weren’t going to let us through so we were stuck there for a while slowly forcing our way across the lines of traffic. We finally got through and were amazed at the lines of cars that wound its way on the opposite side of the road it must have gone for kilometres. We found out later that it was a public holiday so a lot of people were heading into Andorra to do some duty free shopping. So glad we didn’t decide to go through Andorra ourselves. After leaving the alps the countryside became much drier and hotter, we found the countryside to be very rugged and desert like reminding us of outback South Australia, then it changed a bit and we came to more farmland and vineyards. We wound up steep hills and drove along high plateaus and then down through rugged gorges and along by dry creeks, we weren’t really sure where we were going to stop but we followed a large river and found a camping ground at Mequineza and the public pool was next door so we thought it a good spot to stop.We were by this time a bit hot and bothered and the temperature in the camper read 39oc so we needed to cool off and have a bit of a break. So needless to say but we made good use of the lovely pool and felt very refreshed after.
We got quite friendly with our neighbour in the campsite who came from London and he was on his own to do some fishing. He loved to have a chat and showed us some photos of the fish he had caught before in the river, catfish the size of a man. He seemed glad to have someone to talk a bit too and as we left us gave us some of his small crayfish to have for dinner, though they were the size of large prawns we though we would try them and ended up having them as entrée before our dinner.
We left that campground about lunchtime on Sunday after having a swim then headed further south and east to a campground at a place called Albarracin, we had never heard of the place before but there didn’t seem to be very many options unless we headed for the coast which was what we have been trying to avoid for now. We followed the road along through the gorges and were delighted to find a picnic area next to a small river where people were there spending Sunday afternoon cooling off in the water and resting under the trees. We decided to stop and see how it was and if it turned out to be quiet later stay there the night. Under the trees by the river it was cool so we ended up staying for 2 nights and it was a restful place to spend the day.
Tuesday morning we decided to get an early start and left about 8.00 to drive up to the town of Albarracin. Built on a steep, rocky hill carved out by the meander of the river it was from 1012 t0 1104, the seat of a tiny Islamic state. Ragged fortress walls rise up the surrounding slopes and the streets are like a maze with centuries old buildings leaning over them. We arrived early and were able to avoid the other tourists so we had a lovely walk around and then climbed the hill to be able to get a wonderful view of the town in the early morning light. After leaving Albarracin we drove 170 kms to a small town called Jalance where the camper stop was by the municipal pool so what more could we want, another afternoon swimming and reading by a pool. We are finding this life really hard to take!
