Sunday 8 February - Alcañiz

Where's Bertie? He spent the night at a municipal Aire in the town of Alcañiz. 

Weather: A grey, sometimes wet morning, but a sunny and warm finish. 

 

We've now spent a total of two nights at a Camping Car Park location (the same one, twice, a year apart), and this stay didn't go entirely smoothly, in that when we came to leave we keyed in our code, it acknowledged it and said 'Good Bye!', but the barrier failed to open. These locations are all unmanned, and I feared an unwelcome delay to our departure, but a very brief phone call to the displayed number had us released within a minute or two. Pretty good service, particularly considering that it was relatively early on a Sunday morning. 

It was a grey, dull morning as we drove south out of France, which became a remarkably wet morning as we passed into Spain. The border really did mark the change from merely grey to monsoonal rain. Quite unpleasant driving conditions. 

Bertie's fuel light had been on for a while by the time we entered Spain, so we knew we were going to have to stop at the first motorway fuel station, which we also knew would be cheaper than even the cheapest fuel stations in France (€1.549 vs €1.662). There we briefly contemplated: to fill up, or to just pop €20 in to fill up later, somewhere cheaper. We opted for the former, which probably wasn't the most sensible choice given how many places we passed at 25-30c less per litre between there and Pamplona (for my future reference: taking the free road around Pamplona passes a cheap fuel station without needing any diversion into the town).

With it being a Sunday, almost no lorries were on the roads so we opted for the free road to Pamplona then onward to Tudela, with Google telling me that the difference in time would be less than 10 minutes. We stopped for lunch somewhere along that section and had a brief chat about where we might spend the night, deciding to head to Alcañiz and decide on arrival if we wanted to stay there or continue all the way down to Peñiscola. 

It had been another long day of driving, and we'd had enough by the time we got to Alcañiz. Arriving at gone 4pm, we wasted no time in heading out for a quick walk around the town - we needed a leg-stretch anyway, and having seen the striking sight of a massive church atop the hill with a castle a short distance away, they enticed us for a quick, urban, pre-tea explore, rather than striding off along the river. Verdict: it's the sort of place that, if the weather was just a bit warmer, we might have stayed for a couple of days. 

Usually we manage to time our walks around Spanish towns when they're absolutely dead, but 1630 is the time of day when people are just emerging back onto the streets after Sunday lunch out, so whilst it wasn't busy on the streets, there were people around. 

With the locals having just finished their lunches, we were ready for tea, so back to Bertie it was.

These long driving days are disproportionately tiring, so it was another early night, ready for one more early-ish start, but this time just for a final 1.5hr hop to our destination.   

A striking church, the centre piece of the view as you drive into town, and the castle over on the nobble on the right. 
 

If I'd been abducted by aliens and dropped into this street I wouldn't have struggled to know I was in Spain. 

The front face of the church, but the more impressive view was from below, from where you could see the scale of the building. 

  

View from the castle

(Margaret B: if you're reading ... seeing that Alcañiz is on one of the camino routes, I'm guessing you've probably been there? If so, did you stay at the Parador?)