Where’s Colin? He’s at a free Aire (with service point) just on the edge of the village of Canjayar at N37º00.834 W2º44.717
I had just programmed the SatNav this morning, to take us to the nearest Lidl, when I noticed the flaw in my planning. Having paid enough attention to make sure we didn’t find ourselves in Almeria on a Monday, I completely failed to notice that we were leaving on a Sunday. Our cupboards are getting a bit bare, and we’re just heading into an area where there will be limited shopping opportunities, so we really could have done with a big shop today. Ne’er mind. I’m sure we’ll easily find some little food shops in the villages we’ll be passing.
Canjayar, sitting on the southern edge of the Sierra Nevada National Park, was to where we headed today, chosen purely because it has an Aire, although also with the hope that once here we would find some walking trails nearby.
The first, obvious thing for us to do upon arrival was to take a walk around the village, where we soon found the public laundy, which was built in 1942:
Continuing along the main street, we turned off down a little side road at random and it was down there that we first noticed one of these ceramic ‘Plan Turistico’ waymarkers, embedded in the road. We duly followed the arrow and had ourselves a tour of the town.
We were just about to follow an arrow up to the church which sits prominently on a pimple above the village, when Mick requested a toilet stop so into a bar we went (passing a man walking down the street carrying a tuba, on our way ). Sipping coffee and tea (respectively, not mixed!), Mick was engrossed in some football on the TV, so I set about inputting the tapas menu into Google translate, and having completed that task I was drooling. We duly ordered:
A coffee, a tea and three plates of food (two served on chips, one with bread) for precisely €8
As we had approached the bar three maroons had gone up, with loud bangs, above the church; a novel way to call the congregation to the service, augmenting the usual tolling of the bells? As we left the bar, the church service had just finished and as we rose steeply up the tiny road we could see such a gathering outside the church that we feared we were about to become tourist gatecrashers at a funeral. As it turned out, it wasn’t a funeral, but the start of some sort of religious procession which included a marching band (ah, so that explained the man with the tuba!). Three more maroons went up as the procession proceeded. I duly leapt out of my skin again.
After admiring the view from outside the church…
… we soon caught back up with the procession, only diverging from it when they turned right at the bottom of the hill and we turned left. We could still hear the band half an hour later as we started heading back to Colin.
We’d not long sat down on the sofa, with the side door open wide, when a herd of goats came past. Not something we see everyday in a motorhome Aire…
Just before we had finished our stroll around the town, we came across a sign (which it would have been handy to find at the start) which told us that we could connect to wifi in that area and download information about, and an audiotour for, the route around the town. The wifi was non-existent, and my mobile data had decided it didn’t want to play just then (something which happens at least once a day for a short period). However, I’ve since visited the website: www.rutasalpujarra.com and was impressed at what I found there – including similar tours of various other villages in the area. A good way to encourage tourism to these little villages, I reckon.
I had just programmed the SatNav this morning, to take us to the nearest Lidl, when I noticed the flaw in my planning. Having paid enough attention to make sure we didn’t find ourselves in Almeria on a Monday, I completely failed to notice that we were leaving on a Sunday. Our cupboards are getting a bit bare, and we’re just heading into an area where there will be limited shopping opportunities, so we really could have done with a big shop today. Ne’er mind. I’m sure we’ll easily find some little food shops in the villages we’ll be passing.
Canjayar, sitting on the southern edge of the Sierra Nevada National Park, was to where we headed today, chosen purely because it has an Aire, although also with the hope that once here we would find some walking trails nearby.
The first, obvious thing for us to do upon arrival was to take a walk around the village, where we soon found the public laundy, which was built in 1942:
Continuing along the main street, we turned off down a little side road at random and it was down there that we first noticed one of these ceramic ‘Plan Turistico’ waymarkers, embedded in the road. We duly followed the arrow and had ourselves a tour of the town.
We were just about to follow an arrow up to the church which sits prominently on a pimple above the village, when Mick requested a toilet stop so into a bar we went (passing a man walking down the street carrying a tuba, on our way ). Sipping coffee and tea (respectively, not mixed!), Mick was engrossed in some football on the TV, so I set about inputting the tapas menu into Google translate, and having completed that task I was drooling. We duly ordered:
A coffee, a tea and three plates of food (two served on chips, one with bread) for precisely €8
As we had approached the bar three maroons had gone up, with loud bangs, above the church; a novel way to call the congregation to the service, augmenting the usual tolling of the bells? As we left the bar, the church service had just finished and as we rose steeply up the tiny road we could see such a gathering outside the church that we feared we were about to become tourist gatecrashers at a funeral. As it turned out, it wasn’t a funeral, but the start of some sort of religious procession which included a marching band (ah, so that explained the man with the tuba!). Three more maroons went up as the procession proceeded. I duly leapt out of my skin again.
After admiring the view from outside the church…
… we soon caught back up with the procession, only diverging from it when they turned right at the bottom of the hill and we turned left. We could still hear the band half an hour later as we started heading back to Colin.
We’d not long sat down on the sofa, with the side door open wide, when a herd of goats came past. Not something we see everyday in a motorhome Aire…
Just before we had finished our stroll around the town, we came across a sign (which it would have been handy to find at the start) which told us that we could connect to wifi in that area and download information about, and an audiotour for, the route around the town. The wifi was non-existent, and my mobile data had decided it didn’t want to play just then (something which happens at least once a day for a short period). However, I’ve since visited the website: www.rutasalpujarra.com and was impressed at what I found there – including similar tours of various other villages in the area. A good way to encourage tourism to these little villages, I reckon.
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