Musings

Here’s where the deciduous magnolia trees/blooms were three years ago on this day; the buds are not this far along this year…and there’s a cold snap coming.

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The moon was bright this morning, even just after 6am. Clear and cold.

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The “possible five inches” of rain turned out to be about two-and-a-half, which is far less…dangerous. Even more exciting: the sun came out almost all afternoon.

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Today’s precip was on the misty-moisty end of the spectrum. The prediction I hear for the next two days is deluge…perhaps five inches.

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Today’s first stop was Numancia, one of the many locations that had pre-CeltIberian settlement, then CeltIberian, then a big rehab/redo by the Romans (who took it in 133 BC). As an additional treat, clouds brought moisture that the temperature converted into ice crystals.

Need I mention that we walked carefully?

Walls, hence occupation, seemingly go on forever.

A fancier dwelling….

On to Uxama. This tower dates to the al-Andalusian period, when Arabs controlled most of the peninsula, including this area. They built many watch-towers to consolidate and maintain their power. It worked for generations…until it didn’t. The castle to the right (red arrow) dates to the 10th–11th C, with later modifications. The river in between (blue arrow) is the Ucero.

Uxama is better known as a Roman city. If all this area had buildings, it was a very large city (I am not sure that it did). This excavated area is between the major hilltops; this view is to the southwest.

The domestic complex in this corner of this area includes and underground store-room (far right; bodega in Spanish).

We left the Roman world behind and checked out the Riaza valley near Montejo.

I’m guessing this is wheat. I’m guessing it’s doing pretty well. We’ve been seeing large piles of bales of wheat straw, just rotting…it appears they bale it with no market…is there a subsidy involved? Just trying to figure out the political economy….

See those lovely mountains below the narrow cloud layer? Tonight’s room is in a tiny village in their foothills.

We motored through this Medieval gate to check out central Ayllón.

Two civic-ceremonial buildings on the mostly Medieval main plaza…. I think the one on the left was a church, and perhaps still is, but the signs relate to non-religious usage.

A different view of this same end of the Plaza Major.

Construction detail…showing beams embedded in soft brick and adobe-type wall materials.

In contrast, this is the building material of the small village we’re staying in. I’m calling it slate.

It’s even visible on one wall of our lovely room.

Posted at 12:44 PM | No Comments »

We left Bilbao in a light rain and went west, in and out of raininess.

We saw the ocean—quick peeks—at least a half-dozen times.

When we cut inland, we encountered clouds above and with us.

In Europe, we’ve found far more frequent tunnels than in the USofA. A tunnel we went through before we reached Bilbao was almost 3 km (1.82 mi)—I forgot to look it up until now.

The elevations eventually had snow…from a storm that came through about three days back. Luck is with us.

We took a wee side trip to see the source of the Ebro River, where there’s a lovely little park…and the river’s first dam.

This is a monument to the river. With a mallard.

Just a few miles from the source are the upper reaches of a major reservoir on the river.

Then, the topography became more rugged, and we drove a bit in dramatic gorges.

Even the side drainages are dramatic.

Oops, look what we climbed into.

Fortunately, the road was clear and the temps waaaay too high for there to be ice.

This is the only town we went through where the buildings had exposed beams. I suspect many of the buildings have beams—they’re just clad in mortar or whatever.

Finally, we descended and the landscape opened up, and the fields are greeeeeen!

Hotel window view….

Posted at 3:15 PM | 2 Comments »

Our room last night had a pair of those arched windows on the third story (second above ground floor) that have gold framing. I learned that if you live in a place with narrow streets and multi-story buildings, like this neighborhood, you may not see much sunshine.

Ah, there is sunshine after last night’s rain.

Is MaNachur offering some kind of irony in lighting up the wind turbines?

I wanted to see this church-castle-tower combo for the massive high walls on the tower. I did not expect to have the quirky bonus of arriving when the grounds crew was taking a break, leaving their equipment to mark the spots where they should resume, and highlighting that the priests rely on so much outside labor to strut their stuff.

This is the Castle of Xavier (Basque: Xabierko gaztelua), and the name Xavier/Javier is derived from the Basque Etxeberri meaning new house. [However difficult we thought Catalan was to grasp, I find Basque words impossible.] The Basque Jesuit cleric and famous proselytizer Francis Xavier (1506–1552; canonized 1622) was from here, taking the name of his hometown as his priestly cognomen (or whatever they’re called). Xavier is now used by many institutions, including Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, to honor the man.

Changing gears, the is the entry area for the Villa Romana de Liédena, which was occupied from the 1st through 4th Cs AD, with its greatest size and decorative opulence at the end, including various mosaic floors. This was a villa, so an agricultural complex and a fancy dwelling complex merged together.

A visitor, it seems to me, would pass through the agricultural entry area and into this impressive patio that featured an open-water pool (the narrow-double-stones outline it) that drained toward the lower left of the photo and away from the house.

This large room was perhaps the core of the elite dwelling.

The villa’s location was chosen with this fabulous view of the Foz de Lumbier, or Lumbier Canyon, with the Río Irati in between, as well as the fields this villa controlled.

Next, we followed the Río Urrobi upstream a long ways. We had some precip, but thankfully it was too warm for the snowflake warning signs at the higher elevations to reflect our current situation.

Despite many signs cautioning us about open range animals, this is one of the first we’ve seen, only a trifle worried that we’ve stopped moving.

This is the typical domestic architecture in these parts…very different.

Sometimes, the homes are slightly fancier.

Our guesthouse is to the right, with the green shutters.

Next door is a church, with a portico over the entrance (seems unusual). Goodnight.

Posted at 2:42 PM | No Comments »

Towns, cities, even small communities, have a plaza (say: plah-thuh here in Spain). In all but the smallest communities, it seems to me, the largest is the Plaza Major (say: mah-yore (kinda)), that is: the biggest plaza. In Medinaceli, it is substantial.

Medinaceli is more famous for this Roman triple-arch—the only triple surviving in Spain.

As near as I can tell, all the row-crops we saw today were this, which I think is winter wheat, that is, planted in the fall, and probably hard/bread wheat. This is what mono-cropping can look like.

Here’s a smaller community’s main plaza, a place called Deza.

This church presides over a playground for small children with two of those ride-a-critter-on-a-spring toys, plus a combo soccer and basketball court for the older kids. The plaza is behind the church from this location, and is about the same size as the one in Deza. This is Mazaterón.

Meet Peñalcázar; peña means cliff. We tried to get to this Medieval ghost town atop an amazing landform. The wind was strong and gusty, too much to fight our way along. If we’d had a 4×4 we probably could have made it up the two-track you can barely see, at least to the outer wall.

The landform won here, too. We tried to climb to the Celt-Iberian settlement that was above us, and controlled this lovely valley, now partly reservoir. We made it about twice this high before we quit. I estimate we were about a third of the way to the site, but it could have been less. Great views, however.

The site is called Aratis, and it is most famous for the several stunning bronze helmets found I believe by metal detectorists. They date to the later Iron Age, probably the 1st C BC. By this time, the Romans were beginning to swarm southern Iberia and Iberia’s Mediterranean coast. Aratis was inland, and at that time safe from incursions.

At our feet were these spiny plants, Genista scorpius, I think. We also trod on what smelled exactly like sage.

We popped up over the lip of a hill, having climbed out of a valley with a large mill complex, now abandoned, that looked like it was in use into the latter half of the twentieth century…and look what we spotted. The configuration and paint job is traditional in Spain (at least now). Outside of Malanquilla.

What a moon as we left our hotel to do some errands. Almost 6pm in Calayatud. The name is a corruption of the Arabic Qal‘at ’Ayyūb, meaning fortress of Ayyūb. Ayyūb is the equivalent of Job, which at least at that time was a common Arabic name. This Ayyūb was Ayyūb ibn Habib al-Lakhmi, the walí, or, roughly, governor, here of al-Andalus, an official reporting directly to the sultan, or, in this case, the emir of Córdoba. There’s a fine hierarchical bureaucracy.

On the top of the list was to scare up some eats, as almost all restaurants in the city are closed on Monday. We went to a large modern supermarket (skipping Aldi). I spotted this offering, probably about 10 different brands/types on offer. [I edited the hooves from the photo; you’re welcome.] I did not look at the prices, but I suspect they were substantial.

Posted at 3:32 PM | Comments Off on Architectural forms, history, eats: plus…

First light from hotel room. The cloud cover soon dissipated.

We exited town by the back way—our first ford…in, amazingly, a Ford!

Infrastructure slope! From top to bottom…. Various electrical poles. Major regional irrigation water, in pipes, not open channels. Zigzag of roads on slope. Road bridge of at least three arches. Railroad bridge of two arches. Oh, and guardrail to keep us safe.

“I can see Madrid from “my” dead olive tree!” [Hint: tall buildings are visible just to the left of the tree, on the horizon.]

I can also see Madrid over this Medieval well with stabilized walls.

I can see my spouse atop a Medieval bridge!

The shady side of this gorge, where I stood to take the above photo, is so shady, the lichens were this prolific.

On the opposite side, the sunlight means happy mosses, with other types of lichen.

One of my favorite compositions of the day.

We drove up to a famous Late Paleolithic site (and museum) with Acheulean-style tools, with and many animal bone fossils and no hominid remains. We were welcomed first by this beast, two cats on the porch of the museum, and no one to allow us in. Oh, well. [Truth: we did know it would be closed by the time we arrived.]

There’s a day-moon from our last mile, and we’re at our hotel for the night. It’s only a little over an hour before the restaurant opens for dinner service. We worked up an appetite!

Posted at 1:38 PM | Comments Off on Not in Kansas

First time a pilot came out to apologize for a late flight—he did it twice, over the mic to all, then walked around and took questions. [Really: last night, but first part of flight in essence.]

First high-elevation corporate witticism I had to “share.” [We left about three hours late; our destination: Madrid.]

Best airline food I’ve ever eaten. Yum. Truly.

We took off in the rental car, headed north, and the first time we hit a dirt road we saw our first caballero.

First Roman villa. This is a late one, and the central courtyard-garden still sports a tree.

First five-arch Medieval bridge. Last modified in 1973.

First Neanderthal cave cluster (mostly protected from the elements with a roof or with small openings—fenced, so we couldn’t get closer).

First fabulous sky of the trip.

First mystery. Sign says the water isn’t potable.

First dramatic bottleneck/pass we’ve driven through.

First night’s hotel room view.

We’re getting into the swing of the Spanish lifestyle: we will dine tonight at 8:30; only two more hours to wait. Over and out.

Posted at 12:28 PM | 2 Comments »