Faded grandeur

Here's an early entry for Derelict Sunday. Today started out wet, but after hanging around the apartment for most of the morning we decided to go out anyway. A good choice because the weather cleared up as we drove inland, and we even saw some blue sky. Also a bad choice as it's Monday and everything in Spain is closed on Mondays. The tourist information office in Ramales de la Victoria was open though, so we collected a load of leaflets about the (closed) caves, and then went on a little road trip into the mountains between Euskadi and Cantabria. The lady in the tourist office recommended Arredondo for its fine casas indianas. Here is the "finest" example we found -- not a patch on Begur's offerings! The village also boasts an incredibly ugly church with a separate tower that looks like a factory chimney. There was nothing else of interest, so we swiftly set off again. 

Feeling slightly peckish by now as we'd failed to find anywhere to buy a sandwich, we were glad to find an open posada in a village miles from anywhere, with half a dozen locals eating lunch. It was the kind of place where there's no written menu, you just make your choice from a list swiftly gabbled by the waitress. So it was sopa de cocido (paprika-flavoured noodle soup), ham, eggs, and chips, and a very nice flan de queso for pudding. With as much cheap and cheerful red wine as we cared to drink, it came to 10 euros each, plus a euro for coffee. A bargain!

Suitably refreshed we finished our circuit, with a highlight being a marvellous view of a crowd of twenty or so griffon vultures soaring from their nesting point on a crag. We got out of the car and watched them flying very close over our heads, although they weren't interested in us. The longer I've been blipping, the more I realise that sometimes you should put the camera down and just look. So I didn't try very hard to photograph them. Nevertheless, "arty" photos here and here.

The landscapes here are difficult to capture in photos anyway, as it's really the cumulative effect of rolling green pastures, dense woodland, rocky snow-tipped peaks, isolated farmhouses ... a fairly typical scene here from the top of the pass just before we saw the vultures.

Back in Castro, it was spitting rain, so we did a bit of shopping and then back to the flat for a cup of tea. Last night's tapas research was very successful by the way, but we won't be trying again tonight as it's Monday.