A little holiday

 When you're retired your time is your own, more or less. It's been very hot this summer and we didn't really fancy moving very much. Autumn is almost here; in fact the hot spell has really broken and we've seen some rain and some storms. After a week in Zaragoza, where first of all we slept without even a sheet and the windows open. During the day the weather was good for shorts and sandals or even in my case a summer dress.  Last Friday the 15th of September we set out from Zaragoza to Orihuela del Tremedal. What a name! It's in the province of Teruel, and it's very remote. There's a motorway from Zaragoza all the way to Sagunto in Valencia and we were going to use our journey to the church retreat as a stepping-stone to Valencia. As the retreat didn't start till the afternoon we wanted to visit Peracense castle.

It looks good, doesn't it? Before we got to the turning there was a violent storm, such that I didn't want to carry on driving, so I pulled into a service station and waited until the worst had passed, and we decided that it wasn't the right day to visit a castle, so we still have it on our to-do list. Instead we went to the city of Teruel and spent the morning there. The streets of the centre are elegant, mostly Modernist, with two beautiful Mudejar towers and a spectacular cathedral, where we had a guided tour finishing up in the jewel in the crown which is the medieval wooden painted ceiling.

This is taken from ground-level

Here, in this view from the gallery you can see the freize of carpenters in red and blue

When the tour was over we had a nice meal on a terrace and then headed for Albarracín which is considered one of the most beautiful towns in Spain. The road is long and winding, and the town is certainly spectacular.

Set in the mountains, with steep streets

Amazing views

Oddities

Curious knockers

It turned out the town had its fiestas.  There were barriers up for bull-running and left-over cow-dung in many of the steep streets. We got our coffee, walked around a bit and then headed off along the winding mountain roads to the village of Orihuela del Tremedal.. Beautiful scenery, scant population.

The place chosen for the church retreat had in earlier times been a hunting lodge from which Franco hunted, presumably the red deer which are celebrated here.

This is a statue outside the tourist office and they offer tours to see the rutting.

The area is all pine forests but they are bordered by oak trees and all the undergrowth is oak seedlings. However, there were hardly any acorns. My theory is that they are harvested to feed the pigs for the all-important ham production.

View from 1790 m above sea level

There's a chapel at the top of the hill and the most spectacular views over three provinces

This explains about the tremedal or trembling peat bog

The arrow tells you where to find the Pole Star and the disk helps you locate constellations.

Once the retreat was over we headed for Valencia, more specifically Manises, a 2-hour drive away.