A Sunday in the Tena valley

It's almost July and it's been pretty hot here. Today we drove up the Tena valley (parallel to the Aragón valley) In formigal it was quite windy and spitting with rain.

From Formigal looking down to Lanuza

Down the road to Santa Elena. A quick picnic in the lay-by and then a walk up the track to the fort and chapel of Santa Elena. According to the legend, Saint Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine hid from the Moors in a cave up there, covered in cobwebs. The doorway of chapel was decorated with flowers for a wedding which had probably taken place the day before. Nice flowers, nice views.

View of the dolmen from above

Wild dianthus

Two dolmen (or dolmens) were discovered in the 1930s and destroyed in the civil war

This one was later rebuilt

Amazing flowers in the lay-by

Two colours! Maybe it is "fragrant orchid gymnadenia conopsea"

It's too late for the pyramidal saxifrage

Orchids

I think these are pyramidal orchids (anacamptis pyramidalis)

I took the photos through a wire fence. They are in a patch of uncared-for land in the Military Mountain School, a short way down the hill from where I live. Such a lovely sight!

More Zaragoza sights

Well actually it's updates on the same traffic "island"

Pomegranate and catalpa

fruit well-formed

Some little pomegranates!

I've been working in Zaragoza for nearly six months so I have only seen country life in passing. However, even in the city there are some great sights!

Zaragoza sights

Zaragoza is a large and busy city, with traffic everywhere, but there are some worthwhile sights.

Ornamental blossom in March

Regeneration: tree stumps sprouting round the edges.

The wonderful pomegranate tree.

Tulipa silvestris

We went on a walk to the top of Monte Oroel yesterday. It's a bit of a climb; you go up a zig-zagging path through the trees for an hour, and then walk on top of the ridge for another half-three quarters of an hour. The views along the ridge are amazing! For me, the best thing was the wild flowers. Lovely gentians, and best of all, something I've never seen before: wild tulips! They are a lot smaller than the cultivated ones, all red and yellow and not very many of them. I couldn't find them in any of my flower books, but they are in various websites online.

Just a couple of photos of the group:

At the top we are at 1,769m above sea level.

The pathway to the top is like a motorway in that it's really busy with people going up and down. Speeds vary enormously, some people jogging there and back, others going in stops and starts. 

Serrablo

I got a request the other day to take a group on a guided tour of some of the churches of the Serrablo. These are little thousand-year-old chapels in tiny or in some cases non-existent villages in the hills near Sabiñánigo. We drove there to have a look; although we'd visited two of the three before, it's one thing to wander around on your own and quite another to take a group there. Being the second of May, the countryside was at its absolute best.

Larrede. The tower on the hill is a 16th century watchtower

at San Juan de Busa, a carpet of scillas

A host of golden daffodils

After a lovely dinner with friends in Sabiñánigo, we drove up the Tena valley to the border, Le Portalet. There are car parks for skiers next to the road, rather a chewed-up landscape after the snow which covered pretty well everything from November until last month has melted. At the moment there's a strong, chill wind. Up in the mountain pass it was bitterly cold and windy, with dirty snow still piled higher than the cars. Le Portalet has half a dozen bar-restaurants and the same number of border shops; warehouse-like stores full of massive bottles of liquor, chorizos, sweets, turron and cheese. After having a cup of lemon tea and buying Spanish turron and French cheese we drove back down into Spain to find the daffodils we'd spotted from the car. It was a bit tricky but we got there.

maybe Pyrenean ranunculus

orchid?

Pink orchid?