All Saints Day, a cold October fiesta!
What better way to spend a day on a cold wet October holiday than to go on an adventure. We had seen on the OS map a hermitage in a very remote corner of the Sierra del Oso. Given the lack of sign posts and the confusing array of tracks, i.e some being the road and others farmer’s tracks to access fields, it was a bit of a challenge for our map reader. Suprisingly Donna got us there quite easily and what a sweet place it was too.
The Ermita de Leria has long been without a hermit but even in this remote corner devotees make the effort to keep the building in good order. From here we carried on across the loggers’ tracks across the sierra going east until we came across the beautiful valley of Alcoluche. Apparently all Castillian words beginning in ‘Al’ are Arabic, from the Moors. And Moors would have farmed this land, terracing the hillsides, planting almonds and pomegranates (a fruit in Spain called granada).
Finding a track to take us home we encountered the inevitable traffic jam…
Passing a beautiful farm called El Alcaida, (who knows), we stopped by the waterfall of the Rio Caramel next to the old poplar (alamo in Spanish. And if that makes you think of Davy Crockett etc… the fort was probably made from poplar trunks hence the name Alamo).
This week the sun will shine again with little chance of rain until the spring. Days will be sunny and warm and evenings cold and starry. Perfect.