The Road from Santiago

  We are heading for Torrecilla de Alcaniz.  You can get a sense of a place when you realise the streetview car hasn’t gone down the street you are plodding.  A bit of flattish land, a river and not much for miles around leads to a town.  Torrecilla de Alcaniz had the usual Bronze Age, first mentioned in the 12th century sort of shtick.  It had a wall. It doesn’t have a wall anymore.  The current church of San Miguel dates back to the 16th century but got altered.  The town hall is also 16th century.  Currently the mayor is of the Popular Party and is Jose Miguel Celma.  Once it had a tile factory and olive oil mills. It does have a famous son, Jose Pardo Sastron.  Born on  15th April 1822 our boy belonged to a long line of pharmacists, practicing in the Bajo Aragón of Teruel for several centuries. He studied in Zaragoza and Barcelona , ​​​​graduating in pharmacy at the College of San Victoriano and, returning to his home town as a...

  We are turning off the road more travelled to follow a track across the hills towards our road west.  This does feel very Spanish, olive groves, shrubs and the like.Thank the lord that we are avoiding July and August.  April is considered not quite warm but not cool.  The average high at the present is about 20oC and average low 9oC.  July averages high at 31oC and it is above 27oC between 12th June and 10th September.  6th January sees the lowest average high, at 10oC. It does rain in Spain and this year has seen notable increases above and beyond the terrible floods.  Usually we could expect an 18% chance of some daily rain at this time of the year - which is the wettest.  Unsurprisingly July is the driest.   Look, by rain, we are talking 38mm in May and 12 in July. The website I got this fromm, https://weatherspark.com/y/42954/Average-Weather-in-Torrecilla-de-Alca%C3%B1iz-Spain-Year-Round has a Pool Score.  July and August are peak...

  Time waits for no man - although Brian Cox may have other ideas.  Today we will cross the greenwich Meridian and someone has felt it was worth putting up a small obelisk to that end and drawn a line across the road.  I say road, the old road that has been sliced off by some straightening and so the line is in this improvised layby. The obelisk has been reviewed by 108 people ina 4.2 star sort of a way.  It has a website.  http://www.thegreenwichmeridian.org/tgm/location.php?i_latitude=40.980800   A year ago Antonio said ‘ Very curious place and even more so if you are from Barcelona and compare Avenida Meridiana and this very remote place. Centennial olive trees and a good place to stretch your legs.’   That says it all really. Now you may be asking, given the Spanish are - in the east - on the Meridian why don’t they use proper time, British time because, time for invented in England - before that people just had days and months and no proper order...

  It is a day of saints and olives.  The olives are provided by the countryside, the saint, by the day. We will go near the Estacion de Valjunquera. It is one of those crumbling and abandoned things on a rural line which has transformed from an occasional provider of trundling happiness to another long distance path for happy walkers to look at tumble down stations.  The place has 39 reviews and an average 4.1 stars.  Most recently OdiseaDron summed it up with ‘ Place to visit with the bt bike... and see how time passes’   Esth’It's a pity the state of abandonment in which most of these stations are founder is more regretful. ‘Jesus added ‘The old station, what a shame, what beautiful buildings they were, is now a greenway so you can go by bicycle, which was the transit from Alcañiz to Tortosa. Today is St George’s Day.  This is a public holiday in Aragon.  It is also the Day of Castilla y Leon but we might be there next year so lets get big on George....