Semana Blanca!

Tarazona
It would be half-term in the UK, but here it's a few days in February when the schools have a holiday; originally to ski, but this year, for us at least, to go to Zaragoza, see the boys and do some light tourism.
After visiting the new, enormous shopping centre, Puerto Venecia on Wednesday, on Thursday we went to Tarazona.
Last year, the cathedral of that city was re-opened after 30 years' restoration work. Judging by the explicative display in the cloisters, it had been truly ruinous, and while not completely finished, the building is lovely. On the outside it's Mudejar and on the inside Gothic. Very nice.

Cathedral cloister

Outside view of the tower and un-restored portico

The amazing facade of the town hall, early 16th century

Tarazona

The old bull ring!

It was a lovely day. After visiting the cathedral we climbed up the hill to the old city where the Jewish quarter has been restored; old cobbled streets and quaint houses. Tarazona is much improved since the last time we visited!

Belchite

The next day, we really went to see ruins. To Belchite, a village which was devastated during the Civil war, and by Franco's orders, left as a memorial.

You can see from the photos that it is a village which was destroyed more than 70 years ago and has been crumbling ever since. Yes, it's a lesson about the horrors of war, but it would be better to raze the whole thing to the ground and plant trees or something.

Vegetables       

I saw these in Tarazona

Borage

Swiss chard

Cardoon
All perfectly typical winter vegetables in Aragon

A big traffic jam!

After all the snow and bad weather, we decided that Saturday was the day and so we loaded the car and started out to Le Somport, just over the border in France. It's about 30 minutes' drive from Jaca on an excellent road. HOWEVER, not long into our journey we realised it would take us longer; there was a continuous line of cars going very slowly, stopping and starting from the second village on the route. We thought it was just sheer volume of traffic; there having been several weekends when the ski resorts couldn't open due to bad weather. When we finally got to the turning for the first ski resort of Candanchu we saw the problem. The main road was closed and all the cars had to drive through Candanchu.

The main road was blocked by a bank of snow, I imagine that further on it was either blocked by an avalanche or in danger of that happening.

So all the traffic wound through the road which goes into Candanchu and out the other side, where most cars went towards Astún and what looked like just a few crossed the border to Somport, the cross-country ski resort. Le Somport is on the road which goes down into France, but it was blocked with another bank of snow, so the only access was from Spain. 

So we finally arrived, parked and got skiing. There is a layer of at least two metres of snow over everything up there; enough for everyone. 

This sign is usually taller than me.

Some of the smaller trees were almost buried.

The snow was quite hard as it wasn't fresh and had melted and frozen again.

It was really beautiful, and not very difficult to get away from the many, many other people there.

When we left, we saw there were cars parked along the road, both sides, right up to and beyond the border with Spain; more than I've ever seen before there.

Extreme conditions

Update on this square: 

now, in April, it looks like this:

In the background you can see the hoardings put up round a site where a building was demolished. It is a copy of the wonderful frescoes in the Diocesan Museum just next door.

On Sunday this tree was blown down by the high winds in Jaca city centre.

There's been a blizzard more or less all day today. I found this bike in the street this morning.

Ice

Yesterday's snow has given way to sunshine and dripping. It started melting in the evening and the water froze in sheets. I've never seen the streets so dangerous! Our rooves are loaded with snow which is slowly slipping down; you always have to look up before you go in or out, but at the same time, a magical row of icicles- with the evocative name of carámbanos in Spanish has formed under the eaves.

Even more snow

This park bench shows the depth of the snow

Our street after cleaning

Watering can

Untouched

Trees' bad hair day

Nandina berries

It snowed yesterday and again today. Thick, fluffy snow. Loading cars and rooves and branches. The cars are pretty well buried.

Snow, snow and more snow!

I went to Huesca yesterday to do some classes. Knowing I'd be finishing at seven in the evening, I took some essentials just in case the weather was bad and I had to stay. It was, however, a beautiful evening; you could see the stars shining, a bit of wind... I drove home. This morning, before 6.30, we realised that there'd been a BIG snowfall. Well, if it was big at 6.30, by 10 it was tremendous. I rang Huesca to say I wasn't going, Rafa tried to get the car out of the garage and failed to get up the snowy ramp. The other car was parked on the street and he struggled to Sabiñánigo in that, very slowly and carefully. It's three in the afternoon now and I think it's finally stopped snowing. The snow is wet and fluffy. Driving is complicated. Everything looks beautiful. I had to beat my garden plants to take the weight  of snow off them. Soon the 30 cms or so on the rooves will start sliding down and we'll have to look before going in and out of doors.

Breakfast time

Plaza de los Sarrios

Overloaded plum tree

Overloaded letter box!

La Garcipollera

Just up the Aragón valley from Jaca is the village of Castello de Jaca. It suffered terribly in the floods at the end of last year; the river bed is still full of branches and rubble sent downstream by the floodwater which took the side off a house. 

On the first of January we went for a walk from Castiello to the Garcipollera valley. The video shows an old bridge with water cascading down into receiving tanks where people go to swim in the summer. There's a lot of water coming down at the moment.