Moving north

Still wondering what the Mayor might do about some Land Rover overnighters down below his village, we slept and there was no noise and it was dark. The moon has only just got started on its new cycle and so we have had some great dark skies. Most nights I have gone outside to have a look and the Plough has been prominent but low and surprisingly Cassiopeia too has been visible from most places, not so low as I would have imagined, in the eastern sky.

If we are in a position to catch the ‘early’ sun, which isn’t early anyway this far south, then the Landy warms up and we jump out of bed. Otherwise it is fairly chilly, especially at altitude. This morning wasn’t too bad and the view of the village was worth stirring for. It's Algarra, nearest town is Teruel, north west of Valencia

There was a twist to the tale though as another vehicle drove down quite early and with my best Spanish I again explained that we had slept overnight. It turns out that this guy was more interested in the pile of sand next to us and once he was happy that we weren’t suspicious, he simply waited for a tractor to arrive. They then lifted a couple of buckets of sand up and into a trailer and then were gone.

We never did meet the Mayor!

We had decided to drive up to the Pyrenees as the weather had turned for the better and so we continued north and headed for Albarracín. Driving up yet another stupendous gorge, we noticed another "big bird". There are many soaring birds but these attracted our attention and we stopped to look more closely. High on the crags we saw at least six vultures. I'm afraid that x10 optical is all I have.

At the top of this gorge we really were "on top" with a high level route that reached ~1,400m. It wasn't so obvious except that even in full sun the temperature wasn't rising as quickly as one might have expected. We made another unscheduled stop in order to buy bread. We happened on a village, Terriente,  a week too early as they were preparing for a festival, to include a series of bull fights. It was obvious something heavyweight was going to happen just from the size of the gates that were being installed.

So to Albarracín which the 'big' map shows to be on the eastern side of the country, west of Tarragona / Barcelona. It is stupendously situated at the entrance to another gorge, through which flows the Rio Guadalaviar. Traffic exiting the gorge has to pass under the town wall in a short tunnel.

We were happy to walk around the old streets but less than happy not to be able to locate a single café, Nada. There's only so much interest to be had when there's no access to a late afternoon coffee.

This whole region, the Sierra de Albarracín is characterised by 2,000m heights and canyons and gorges. They apparently receive 100cm of rainfall per annum, however the late Spring and its rain is already a distant memory.