Where's Bertie? He's still in the Aire at Bellús.
Weather: Overcast start yesterday, before clearing in the afternoon; breezy again. Gloriously sunny and calm today and a pleasant 22 degrees this afternoon.
At a glance Bellús is a standard Spanish village located out in the sticks. Closer inspection, however, reveals it to be quite a smart place. It does have the obligatory abandoned buildings/building projects, but the rest are mainly well kept and there are signs at various points around the village stating, to the last cent, how much has been spent on improvement schemes for its open spaces.
The town hall has also gone to the trouble of installing multi-lingual (Castillian, Valencian and English) signs at all of its Points of Interest. That there are only five of them, and none of them overly interesting, doesn't outweigh my appreciation of the fact that they are trying to make their little settlement attractive to visitors.
The main draw of the location was, we thought, the caves, the nearest of which is about a mile the other side of the village. However, when we walked out there for a little look, it appeared that the most popular weekend pastime is climbing, followed closely by picnicking in one of the two picnic areas that sit between the trail and the river.
Here are some snaps:
Spot the climbers. Surprising (to my mind) how few were wearing helmets. There's also one of the caves visible in this shot.
Some of the caves display ancient drawings and etchings (and also have railings so you can't get near). There is more contemporary art elsewhere nearby.
On last weekend's blog post from La Azohía, I pondered whether it was the proximity of March (it was 29 Feb at the time, which is as good as 1 Mar, isn't it?) that had caused a sudden influx of Spanish weekenders. I'm now feeling more convinced that 1 March marks the start of their season, as the Aire here, as well as the adjacent picnic area, suddenly filled up with vans yesterday with many of the new arrivals being Spanish. Most of those new arrivals left again today, leaving just the Brits, Dutch, Germans and French (who have mainly sorted themselves into nationalities within the four parking areas here; I wonder how much is by accident, subconscious or by design. I hadn't noticed that all of our neighbours were British until after we'd chosen and pulled into our parking space). Oddly, there don't seem to be any Scandinavians here.
Weather: Overcast start yesterday, before clearing in the afternoon; breezy again. Gloriously sunny and calm today and a pleasant 22 degrees this afternoon.
At a glance Bellús is a standard Spanish village located out in the sticks. Closer inspection, however, reveals it to be quite a smart place. It does have the obligatory abandoned buildings/building projects, but the rest are mainly well kept and there are signs at various points around the village stating, to the last cent, how much has been spent on improvement schemes for its open spaces.
The town hall has also gone to the trouble of installing multi-lingual (Castillian, Valencian and English) signs at all of its Points of Interest. That there are only five of them, and none of them overly interesting, doesn't outweigh my appreciation of the fact that they are trying to make their little settlement attractive to visitors.
The main draw of the location was, we thought, the caves, the nearest of which is about a mile the other side of the village. However, when we walked out there for a little look, it appeared that the most popular weekend pastime is climbing, followed closely by picnicking in one of the two picnic areas that sit between the trail and the river.
Here are some snaps:
On last weekend's blog post from La Azohía, I pondered whether it was the proximity of March (it was 29 Feb at the time, which is as good as 1 Mar, isn't it?) that had caused a sudden influx of Spanish weekenders. I'm now feeling more convinced that 1 March marks the start of their season, as the Aire here, as well as the adjacent picnic area, suddenly filled up with vans yesterday with many of the new arrivals being Spanish. Most of those new arrivals left again today, leaving just the Brits, Dutch, Germans and French (who have mainly sorted themselves into nationalities within the four parking areas here; I wonder how much is by accident, subconscious or by design. I hadn't noticed that all of our neighbours were British until after we'd chosen and pulled into our parking space). Oddly, there don't seem to be any Scandinavians here.
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