The Road from Santiago

  It is the 23rd October. Spanish wiki has some things for this date. Most are not Spanish however today in 1702 the Battle of Rande [or Vigo] in which our brave boys - by which I mean the Anglo-Dutch Fleet under Admiral Rooke, took on the Bourbons, under Admiral Velasco y Tejada and gave him a bit of a thrashing - all the Bourbon ships were sunk.  Because of this Vigo Street, London got its name.   We are off to El Pobo de Duenas. Literally. We are going to have to detour to get to it. It is another town that bears tribute to the effect of Spain’s economic miracle of the towns in the 1960s.  The population doubled between 1842 and 1857. By 1887 it was over 1000 and peaked at 1100 in 1910. In the 1920s it sunk back to the 700s, drifted to 550 in 1960 and thereafter steadily declined to the present 103. Our old friends the GSH reported in 1845, POBO ( el ): l. with town hall in the province of Guadalajara (25 leagues).  Situated on rough terrain with good ...

The N-211 scrapes, burrows and straighteneds itself along the plain and we will soon be bypassing Castellar de la Muela.  We aren’t going into the village, which today is home to 22 people. This is a tenth of what it was until 1960 - when it plunged to 37 over the next forty years. Of course the GSH was here in the 1840s.  Here are the edited highlights….  Situated on the eastern slope of a hill called La Muela , and exposed to north and south winds; the most common illnesses are rheumatism and chest ailments. It has 72 houses , distributed from the slope of the aforementioned hill to its summit; the town hall with a jail; a primary school, attended by 30 students, under the charge of a teacher paid 500 reales, and a parish church (The Exaltation of the Holy Cross), served by a priest and a sacristan.   The land , with the exception of some small orchards irrigated by hand with water from wells, is dryland and of fair quality: it comprises 1 pasture with some woo...

  We have taken a wrong turn so back down the road we go and might as well have another good look at the castle as we go. The odd thing about this castle is that each tower has it own Google review. The nearest to us is Torre de Veladores. Juan wrote ‘ Accessibility is somewhat difficult due to a spiral staircase and narrow passages. There are beautiful views from the top of the tower, but a windbreak makes movement difficult and poses a tripping hazard. Access to the roof leaves an unmarked and unprotected opening in the staircase. Be careful when taking photos to avoid falling into this hole. ‘ Round we go and towards a couple of petrol stations and the Restaurante El Cordobes.  Amparo gave it four stars five days ago. They felt ‘ We were just passing through, stopped, and it was a pleasant surprise: a roadside restaurant with stunning views of Molina de Aragón Castle, serving good home-style food. The salmorejo was excellent, a typical Cordoban dish with the essence of the...

We are heading for Molina de Aragon. It is going to be very exciting. It has a river and a bridge and a castle and everything. Let's do climate. Molina de Aragon is famed for having recorded the coldest temperature in Spain - a chilly -28.2oC on 28thJanuary 1952.  We are 1062m above sea level. It was almost beaten on 17th December 1963 when they made -28oC.   The hottest was 38oC - on 14th August 1987.  and the average max in July is 30oC.  January sees an average of 5.2 days of snow, February 4.2 and March 3.6.  The most rain to fall in one day was 70mm, which fell on 30th July 1970 - More than three times the average for July and more than the average for any month. People surely lived here for sometime. I am sure Neolithics farmed away.  Copper Aged people may well have stopped for a bit. Romans romaned.  The Caliphate did its thing. Wiki Spain is almost silent until Alfonso I of Aragon turned up took the place for… well, himself. His brother, Ramir...