Heading for the Coast
After tearing ourselves away from Zaragoza we carried on heading West towards the town of Ainsa. But first we stopped off at the waterfall at Salto de Bierge. This would be very busy in the summer season with a swimming beach above the falls, but in October everything was shut and no one was around.
We also stopped off at the gorgeous hilltop Moorish town of Alquezar. The town is in the Sierrra de Guara national park and is in the foothills of the Pyrenees. There is a Moorish citadel set on a rocky outcrop above the town. This was built in the 8th century but Christians took over the area in the 11th century and built the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria La Mayor in the 12th Century.
The church has a 2 storey cloister which has very well preserved original paintings on the ground floor walls and some intricate carvings on the internal stone pillars.
The town feels very similar to the Provence hilltop towns and the medieval streets were very pretty.
There is a short walk of around 5kms which drops down into the Rio Verre canyon below the town and then through a series of catwalks along the side of the canyon walls. The trail traverses around the town allowing you to climb back out and up to the other side of town from where you started. It was a really nice hike and well worth doing although the narrow catwalks must get congested in summer.
We left Alquezar and headed to Ainsa to spend the night there and to explore the town in the morning.
Ainsa was the capital of the old kingdom of Sobrarbe which became part of Aragon in the 11th century.
The town has a large castle, of which only the exterior walls remain and just outside the castle walls is a large market square. This is then abutted by a tangle of narrow medieval streets and closely packed houses.
Our next stopover was the town of Jaca, which is a large town on a hilltop plateau and was the first capital of Aragon. There is a large fortress, the Ciudadela de Jaca, just a hundred metres from the centre of town. It is pentagonal in shape, which is more easily visible from a drone shot, and was the first citadel in Spain to be built to withstand cannon fire.
The town itself is very nice and we stopped in a bar on the main square for a hot chocolate, with a cheeky shot of Baileys in it to warm us up.
Leaving Jaca we decided to drive a loop further into the Pyrenees to see the mountain town of Anso. This is a really cute town but was fairly deserted when we visited. It seems like a lovely town though and would be a great centre for hikes in the summer.
We quickly left Anso behind and drove, in pouring rain, to the lowland town of Sol de Rey Catolico. The drive was really spectacular and we saw several rivers that were swollen by the rain and were raging torrents.
Sol de Rey Catolico is an incredibly well preserved medieval town where the centre is unchanged in hundreds of years.
Unfortunately, we are finding in many of these small Spanish towns that they are mostly closed up out of season, even the church was locked up, which was a real shame.
Our next destination though, the beautiful town of Olite, was fully open and actually had a fairly large number of tourists. Olite is a medieval town with Roman origins that is home to the Palace of the Kings of Navarre.
Built in the 15th Century by Charles III, the Palace complex with its high walls, towers and moats was considered one of the most beautiful in Europe. Beautiful gardens were added and elaborate furnishings. Charles even kept exotic animals such as giraffes and lions in a menagerie.
The palace was never intended to have a defensive aspect and as such the focus was on the aesthetics. Unfortunately the buildings were gutted by fire in 1813 but it was extensively rebuilt in the 20th Century. This palace is well worth a visit and has one of the best audio guides we have listened to.
Olite lies on the road to Pamplona which was the next destination on our whirlwind tour of Northern Spain. Pamplona is of course famous for its annual Running of the Bulls festival where bulls are set loose to run through town (and tourists) to the bull ring where they are then put to death.
However that is in the summer and we were there in a blustery and showery autumn. What we saw of Pamplona is a large modern city with a buzzy central square and some attractive parks. Without the pull of the festival and nice weather though we weren’t persuaded to spend more than a day exploring the city.
Our last stop in Spain, as we had reached the Atlantic Coast, was San Sebastian or Donsotia-San Sebastian as it is also known. There is an Aire here just next to the university which is an easy cycle or a 10 minute bus ride into the centre of town and it only costs €3 a night (off season). An absolute bargain and unsurprisingly it was very busy with most people using it as a stopover as they headed South for warmer weather.
San Sebastian is world renowned for its amazing food and there are 19 Michelin stars in restaurants in the area. We weren’t here for the Michelin stars but we did want to experience the amazing Pinxtos scene. Pinxtos is the Basque word for tapas and San Sebastian has a reputation for having a very lively and high quality bar scene. The bars were busy at the weekend with locals but quietened down in the week when only a few tourists remained.
Just like in Zaragoza we enjoyed a bar crawl at lunchtime for two days in a row and had some amazing little dishes. Sarah really enjoyed a local wine called Txakoli which is a semi-sparkling dry white and I really enjoyed the Burnt Basque cheesecake. This is a local speciality which was only really developed in the last 50 years and involves a simple cheesecake which is cooked at too high a temperature to cook the outside but leaves the interior deliciously squishy and soft.
The beach at San Sebastian is huge and I imagine packed in the summer but at this time of year there were only a few walkers to be seen.
This was sadly the end of our trip through Spain and felt like the beginning of the end of our long summer trip. From here we were heading North to Calais for our ferry back to the UK. There was still time for some fun to be had on our way back North, but we needed to start getting some miles under our belt!
