Where's Bertie? He's at a municipal Aire in the small town of Simat de la Valldigna. Exact location: 39.04137, -0.30752.
Weather: Sunny, warm (20 today), breezy.
The sun hadn't yet broken over the horizon as I left Bertie this morning for some repetitions of the 2-mile promenade.
There's almost certainly a setting on my phone's camera that would capture the vivid orange of the sky at dawn. This wasn't it.
I was in good company. Considering what late hours the Spaniards keep (it's normal for restaurants to only start serving evening meals at 9pm), it's surprising how many of them are out exercising at a relatively early hour.
Next on the agenda today (after essentials like breakfast) was laundry, but that plan got thwarted by a lack of anywhere to park in the immediate vicinity of the laundrette. As our need for clean things isn't yet approaching urgent, we continued on our way to Simat. Our route to get here took us along an 'interesting' road. 'Track' some might say. If it hadn't been for the both the SatNav and Google being in agreement that it was a good way to go we wouldn't have proceeded, but sure enough it took us to where we needed to be.
I'd thought that our destination was up in the hills, but it turns out that we're in the valley, surrounded by hills (behind which the sun dipped at just gone 4pm - an early loss of solar power today). It's a nice location indeed.
Legend has it that in 1298 King Jaume II el Just was overwhelmed by the beauty of the valley when he saw it for the first time and said to his priest "This is a praiseworthy valley for a monastery." As a result, the place got its name and a monastery came to be built. That monastery was stripped of its belongings in the 1830s, whereupon the monks left and the place fell into ruin. In the 1990s work was started to preserve what remained, to restore small bits of it and to insert infrastructure to open it up to the public. Within an hour of arriving today, we found ourselves having a good poke around the place (entry is free, but it would have been worth a few euro). Here are a few snaps, some of which hopefully give a flavour of the valley setting:
Viewed from just down the street
Looking to the church and refectory from inside the entrance
Inside the church - a snap that doesn't do justice to the ornateness of this now otherwise bare building.
Weather: Sunny, warm (20 today), breezy.
The sun hadn't yet broken over the horizon as I left Bertie this morning for some repetitions of the 2-mile promenade.
I was in good company. Considering what late hours the Spaniards keep (it's normal for restaurants to only start serving evening meals at 9pm), it's surprising how many of them are out exercising at a relatively early hour.
Next on the agenda today (after essentials like breakfast) was laundry, but that plan got thwarted by a lack of anywhere to park in the immediate vicinity of the laundrette. As our need for clean things isn't yet approaching urgent, we continued on our way to Simat. Our route to get here took us along an 'interesting' road. 'Track' some might say. If it hadn't been for the both the SatNav and Google being in agreement that it was a good way to go we wouldn't have proceeded, but sure enough it took us to where we needed to be.
I'd thought that our destination was up in the hills, but it turns out that we're in the valley, surrounded by hills (behind which the sun dipped at just gone 4pm - an early loss of solar power today). It's a nice location indeed.
Legend has it that in 1298 King Jaume II el Just was overwhelmed by the beauty of the valley when he saw it for the first time and said to his priest "This is a praiseworthy valley for a monastery." As a result, the place got its name and a monastery came to be built. That monastery was stripped of its belongings in the 1830s, whereupon the monks left and the place fell into ruin. In the 1990s work was started to preserve what remained, to restore small bits of it and to insert infrastructure to open it up to the public. Within an hour of arriving today, we found ourselves having a good poke around the place (entry is free, but it would have been worth a few euro). Here are a few snaps, some of which hopefully give a flavour of the valley setting:
Another walk this afternoon took us around the town, but the main attractions here are definitely the monastery and the landscape. Various signs in the town give details of the walking routes nearby and having admired the largest of the surrounding hills today (not massive: just under 850m) and I downloaded a gpx file of a 12.5 mile circuit that would take us over its summit. Unfortunately, with Mick's calf so recently injured, it wouldn't be sensible for him to tackle such an outing just now, so we may have to look for something a bit more sedate to do whilst we're here.
Looks like a good ridge walk in that middle photo - pity Mick is out of action.
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