Towards the mountains

 I have found the combination of loads of mobile data and Google Translate a very useful holiday tool. In a calendar month I will have used almost all of my 11GB of data.

Although my Spanish Duolingo ‘web learning’ before we left, gave me a good start to the language, I forgot to pack my notebook of ‘special words’, so perhaps used Google more than I expected.

The Google translate app is easy to use and if necessary it will offer a spoken translation, although I’ve hardly used that.

One surprising feature is that it can perform direct text recognition to translation. Just using the camera you hover over the text and English, in my case is superimposed. Like this…

With more complex language the translation is a little less accurate but nevertheless it is very handy.

We were by now watching the weather forecast for the northern coast and made the decision that we wouldn’t head for the Picos. What’s the point in going there only to meet cool wet weather? The Pyrenees were showing a better forecast and we have only been in the Spanish side once, for a couple of days, so there was plenty to ‘go for’.

So we confirmed a change of course and headed for ‘somewhere in the Pyrenees’. First though, was another hill-top town and magnificent church and then another open road.

On the way we paid a return visit to a magnificent canyon which is just stunning from the mirador de Galiana at 1,120m.

Later we did the usual turn off the road into a neighbouring village and spied a bar with plenty of activity. Lunch!

Inside I almost had to push my way to the bar, as there were about eight locals sitting along it. I used my best Spanish to order coffees and some tapas but one of the guys decided to recommend the tortilla and we were served with a sizeable portion, plus the anchovy and quails egg ratione and an egg stuffed with tuna mayonnaise.

 

The barman asked if I was English or American. One of the locals was from Washington State “but I’m not going back”. He said he was looking after his kids until they were old enough for him find some work. That’s all his life story I gathered in a snatched conversation.

Later we stopped next to a lake and had a swim, it was Saturday and quite busy with some Spanish but also a fair number of French who were there for the duration.

We then embarked on a search for an overnight stop which was supposed to be up a narrow, extremely loose track up the side of a valley.

So we drove the narrow, extremely loose track, very slowly in low gear, until Google indicated a right fork. It was even narrower and steeper and so tiny that we assumed it wasn’t the right one. Google rerouted us but all that did, was take us further and further along the extremely narrow loose track until we found somewhere to turn around.

I walked up the other track but there was no way I was going to drive it. Instead we headed up the valley towards Formigal and found a place at the end of the tarmac above a village where we spent a pleasant night.