This was a beautiful route, with hardly any traffic. I would guess about one car every five minutes. It was a strenuous climb of 600m, but manageable.
The Maestrazgo is an area of sparsley populated upland. It is remote and quite bleak apart from the ubiquitous pig farms. Huge pig sties are everywhere and though we could smell pigs we never saw one, only hams for sale in every village. I have no regrets at being vegetarian.
Morella is a fortified town perched high above the surrounding countryside and is totally spectacular. We wandered the streets for a while and ate a nice lunch at the top of the town.
 |
| Roman aqueduct on the approach to Morella |
 |
| Gateway to Morella |
We had to leave all too soon as we still had 40 uphill kms to do to our hotel in Cantavieja. We descended with backward views to Morella and continued to the pretty town of Mirambel.
 |
| Mirambel |
We continued onward and upwards, a little alarmed by the discrepancy between the mileage to Cantavieja in our guidebook (10km) and that on the road signs (15km). The latter proved to be correct!
Cantavieja is perched like an eagle's nest high above the road. You can see it from miles away.
 |
| Cantavieja on the distant hill |
It's a very arduous 4km climb to the village and we are now installed at the very friendly and good value (€30) Hotel la Posada (formerly Hotel Julian), the bikes are safely locked in the garage. After a good meal here we wandered around the town.
The road we came along to Cantavieja
 |
| Evening stroll in Cantavieja |
We are now in Aragon and have left the yellow ribbons and political slogans of Catalonia behind.
Fuentespalda to Cantavieja 80km, 1600 ascent.
No comments:
Post a Comment