10th Apr PENISCOLA – MORELLA

Disappointingly there was no contact from Karen and Howard (Hen’s aunt and uncle) so we’ve moved inland to an aire recommended in the aire book.

The road was quite hairy; hair pin bends and sheer drops, but it was two lanes and there were some big trucks using it so it wasn’t too scary. We climbed to 1080m above sea level (Brett thinks that’s higher than Pen-y-Fan), our ears were popping. The scenery was lovely, as Brett said, it was how you would imagine Tuscany looks; neat terraced fields with sheep, goats and cattle, stone farm houses, and brilliant blue skies. There were river beds with stone bridges crossing them, but there was no water; we don’t know if this is because of the dry winter or if they only flow when the rain runs off the mountains.

View as we approached Morella

View from our van

The aire is just outside the town and the book said it was a seven minute uphill walk to the town – huh! The town was a mile away up hill and it took me at least seven minutes to get there on my bike (and my bike has an engine!!) and I was puffed out. And that was only the bottom of the town (and where we left the bikes); the church and castle were on the top of the hill which we had to climb up – so I was double puffed out when we got to the very top. But it was worth it the views were spectacular.

Morella has a Moorish castle (dating from 950), a Gothic church and the houses are really tall with, due to the narrowness of the streets, balconies that practically touch those opposite; all of the buildings have these fabulous, huge, thick, heavy, wooden doors – I got Brett to take a few pictures.

Just a door on a house!

Obviously a Church

I love this door, it was metal

Another house

When we got back to the van, about 5.30 p.m. the wind had picked up and the clouds over Morella were really black. All our neighbouring vans ‘battened down their hatches’ bringing in satellite dishes and aerials; lots of the vans we encounter are much more sophisticated than ours, bigger with dedicated bedroom(s), television (Sky of course), microwave and even washing machine – that’s not real camping; in fact being in a campervan isn’t real camping but I wouldn’t fancy spending a year in a tent, sleeping on the ground AND aires don’t allow tents, so it would cost more! It started raining about 6.00 and it’s rained on and off for most of the evening – I wonder if there’s any water in the river beds tonight?