Wall art

Eighteenth century, with later additions. Today was a bit grim, not actually raining, but overcast and misty. We decided to go out anyway, to the monastery of St Victorián, allegedly the oldest in Spain (well, it would be if it hadn't been completely demolished and rebuilt three times, the last in the 18th century). It's up 12 km of narrow road that goes nowhere else; when we got there we met a couple of Toulousains who were eating breakfast having camped in the car park overnight in order to go climbing in the morning. A Spanish couple arrived and told us there would be a guided tour at 12 o'clock. We were sceptical; why on earth would anyone lay on a guided tour in this isolated spot on a wet Sunday in October? 

It was 11 o'clock, so we decided to wander up the mountainside a bit to look at the hermitage of San Anton. It's unprepossessing from the outside, a stone shed that looks like an animal shelter (see extra). However, to our surprise the interior had been painted rather extravagantly in the 18th century, to make it look like a swanky urban church. See also the other extra.

When we got back to the car park at five to twelve, half a dozen people had turned up. A yellow car came bowling up the track and a man got out and unlocked the gate. So the guided tour did actually exist. We joined it, but it has to be said that church and tour were both pretty dull. The inside was entirely unadorned because after the monastery was burned and abandoned in the civil war, all of its contents were removed and reused in various other churches in the region. So it's just an empty shell, currently being restored.

The tour took an hour, which was about 45 minutes too long. Even more surprisingly, when we came out the car park was crammed as a whole lot more people had turned up for the 1 p.m. tour. There obviously isn't much to do in the Sobrarbe on a wet Sunday. As the weather wasn't great we decided to go home and have a cosy Sunday indoors, reading and writing.