San Juan de la Peña

On Saturday morning we drove to the New Monastery of  San Juan de la Peña. Having seen both the old and new monasteries quite a few times, we just went for a little walk to the balcony which looks out over the descent to the village and the valley of the river Aragón Sobordán. We saw damage from the heavy snowfalls of the winter:

There were violets and hepaticas all over the place. This was the angle of a stone bench.

Showing off!

I did some patchwork and I want to show it off!

It may not look like much to you but it's many years since I did any and it's all wadded and quilted (by hand) and I'm proud of it!

El Pozo de San Lázaro

Zaragoza. The River Ebro is still really high, although you can see that it's gone down at least a metre from the very high flood waters a couple of weeks ago. Today we went on a walk down Camino de la Torres to the Unión bridge, crossed the swollen river and then walked along the banks to the Stone bridge. Just before the bridge we saw the terrifying pozo (well) of San Lázaro. It's a place where the flood water whirls.

Rafael told me his memory of the terrible accident which happened in 1971. A bus, travelling from Barcelona to Badajóz fell off the bridge and was swallowed by the river. 45 people were rescued and 9 were lost, including 5 children. Apparently thousands of people went to help.

I read that the well or chasm is man-made, probably from first-century excavations to provide stone for the bridge. It was eventually brought from further away because what was extracted wasn't good enough. The chasm is up to 18 metres deep. 

Zaragoza floods

After the heavy snow in the mountains the rivers are running full to overflowing. Both upriver and downriver from Zaragoza there are disastrous floods. Whole villages have been evacuated or made into islands as the Ebro runs through them.
In the city it has burst its banks even more than a month ago. Today I saw a container for paper being swept along by the massive floodwaters.

Icicles

As the snow melts in the sunshine we've got some spectacular icicles.

On the cathedral

And also on this chalet.

River Ebro

Update: 20th Feb we saw some more photos:

This was the evening of 20th February

So much rain, so much snow. The water has to go somewhere. On Wednesday 4th Feb the Ebro looked like this in Zaragoza:

Here's a video. It's a bit noisy as it was terribly windy

                                           

There was some snow on Tuesday night. This much:

Apparently on the outskirts of town there was more.

Snow, snow and more snow!

Friday morning started off with snow. It's Sunday and it still hasn't stopped snowing. Luckily, I came home on Thursday because it was a holiday in Zaragoza. We went to the nearby village of Badaguás for dinner and a session in the spa at the hotel there. It was lovely, but we could see the snow falling all the time from the pool. Just after six o'clock we dried off, Rafa turned the car round and drove back down the hill. The snowplough had just cleaned the road and it was mostly downhill. We arrived a little stressed but safe and sound, taking care to park the car facing downhill. By Saturday morning, it was deep:

Actually, these were Friday night.

On Saturday, we checked the cars:

And this is on Sunday:

I think it's as big as any snowfall I've seen here, especially because the streets haven't been cleared. The cars are in chaos right now.

This is the back garden; knee-deep

The front. You can see where the snow is beginning to slide down the rooves.