Meandering through Spain 2024

The weather wasn’t great when we arrived in France so decided to press on and hopefully take advantage of the better weather forecast further north in the next couple days. Like all good plans though, the weather beat us, and by the time we arrived in Champagne it was wet and cold 🤣 Waking up to a very heavy mist we decided to give our planned bike ride along the Marme velo route a miss, and spend the day “sightseeing “ around the WW1 battlefields of the Somme. Started off at The Battle of The Somme Museum in Albert  - a very sobering experience - housed in the extensive air raid shelters / vaults underneath the imposing town cathedral, created during WW11. The artefacts, reconstructions and memorabilia offer an extremely vivid insight into the whole process of the battle and the horrendous experience of life in the trenches. The audio visual film at the start focussed on the various memorials around the region, erected to commemorate the different nations who fought in the battle...

With just a few days left in Spain, before the long journey up through France (and probably rubbish weather), we started to make our way up north stopping at a couple of places on route. Thanks once again to Sawdays, our first stop was at the beautiful hilltop village of Vilafamés in Castellón, checking into El Jardin Vertical, a lovely hotel built into the rock at the top of the ancient village. Again, an area we are unfamiliar with, but reading about the village and the surrounding region did draw us in. A magnificent castle and huge cathedral dominate the top of the old town, all built into the sedimentary rock. A huge piece of this red sedimentary rock, found in one of the small narrow streets is known as “rodeno” and is associated with an historical tale that people of this area were afraid that this precariously positioned rock might fall and kill them - so they tied ropes around it to try to shift it, but the ropes snapped and they ended up falling on their bottoms, covering the...