An ex-castle

 We are heading into Tales.  Above is Tales Castle. For castle, read pile of stones in a tower shaped way. It is off 12th century Arabic in design. It was developed to have three towers and got a make over during the Carlist Wars.



The town has, if nothing else, a well developed wiki page.  https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_(Castell%C3%B3n) It’s 850 population is down on the 1100-1200 of much of the last century, but up on the Post 1960s slump, going down to 724 in 2001. They have 7 councillors, five of whom are from the PSOE.



We are in the start of civilization but we are still in rocky country including the Cave of the Skulls and Pitfall of the track. Despite all this, not a lot of stuff has been found around the Ancient Iberian period  When the Kingdom of Aragon took over the place was given to Ximen de Forces.  He repopulated the place with families from Teruel.  It suffered during the 17th century explosion of the Moriscos and had the dubious pleasure of hosting an important Carlist War battle.  On 1st August 1839 the Carlists, under General Cabrera, entrenched themselves round the castle.  General O’Donnell’s Liberal Forces did for them and did big damage to an ancient monument.  



Economically the place used to be big in carob, almond and olives. From the 1950s irrigation meant citrus fruits became a thing.  In recent time Tales became a commuter town for Onda, Ribesalbes and Villareal.  




We are going past the Bar Piscinas Tales.  Mild Expletive! It’sclosed on Mondays.  Usually it is open from 6.45am till 4pm.  It gets 4.4 stars  A week ago Manolo said’We booked a paella for us. And it was very good. So were the starters. Very friendly.’   Three weeks ago Casa Rural El Portillo reckoned ‘We have eaten very well. Some very good tapas. Especially the black pudding and onion croquettes. To repeat.’




On we go Artesa,  a hamlet three kilometres beyond the centre of Onda.  Like Tales it was depopulated when the ancient, shall we say it, native population, was expelled for religious reasons.  Eventually it was repopulated.  The Braseria Wilson is marked as temporarily closed and hasn’t had a review in two years.   We better nip off the main street to La Terrassa de Noa.  It is open from 6.15 am to 4.50pm, 1.35 on Saturday and closed Sunday.  It only has three reviews, two five stars and unworded and a one star, complaining the place wasn't open for three days.




Tomorrow a land of castles and tiles.












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