Day 67: Castello de la Plana to Sagunto

November 1, 2023

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In today's photos you will scarcely see a moving car on the road. That's because neither did we. In our typically dozey way, we thought little of it, while casually riding down the middle of the road and spinning gaily round and round normally deadly looking roundabouts. We did casually wonder why Pedro, the normally efficient manager from the place we plan to store the bikes in Valencia was not answering our emails, or phone calls! It took the lady at the B&B to set us straight:

"In Spain, October 31st is known as 'Día de las Brujas' (Day of the Witches), November 1st as 'Día de Todos los Santos' (All Saints Day) and November 2nd as 'Día de los Muertos/Difuntos' (Day of the Dead/All Souls Day). The Halloween equivalent in Spain, 'Día de las Brujas', is not particularly a day for celebration."

You would think we'd know this. After all, we did watch "Coco"!

Empty road through oranges - our story for most of the day.

Here I turn the camera slightly sideways, to show that the oranges probably run all the way to the distant mountains.

The first town on our route was Borriana, and we passed its interesting church of San Blas directly on the way in. We actually saw the church from across the "river", which like many we have seen in recent days was totally dry. Obviously there is a season when it has water, but not now.

We crossed the river and went for a look at the church, It is a rebuild, done in 1882, and was closed to boot. However just beside it are the remains of what had been a hospital, and before that perhaps another muslim building. The hospital at any rate was know to or supported by King James I , in 1234. As is often the case in old cities, there were demolitions and constructions on the site, which is now an archeological zone, with several preserved bits of foundations.

Walls from buildings that were adjacent to the church.

Preserved foundation bits. A timeline on one info panel mentions 1094 at the date when the town was captured by El Cid. We should re-watch the movie, though we hate Charleton Heston, and all the violence as well.

We paused for a brake cylinder adjustment. Here is Dodie, not usually a grease monkey, wielding the wrench!

EV 8 now took us scenically to the beach.

No we went along the water, or maybe one street in from the water. Facing the sea were the usual gangs of condo buildings, but also some more attractive individual buildings.

We ran somewhat inland for quite a bit, on a road that looked like this (and no cars, eh).

We finally arrived at an estuary, or maybe just a sea side lake, called l'Estany. This had been set up as a park with an orientation to kids, and featuring aquatic birds . There were picnic tables and info boards as well. Despite the picnic tables, for some reason I was pouring myself coffee with two hands while serving myself pains au chocolat with my teeth, from a plastic sealer. A slight slip from hand to mouth, and coffee plus pastries were in the mud! "Dans la merde" as we might technically put it. Dodie sweetly put some chocolate pastry twists in my hand. and more coffee was poured. So nice!

Lots of ducks and cormorants:

Not bright enough to actually use a table!

Our next town up was Moncofa, which had a bit of a square with the rather interesting building pictured below, with the yellow finials. There was also a statue of James (Jaume) I . He was instrumental in the repopulation of the area in the 13th century with Christians, after the Moors were defeated.

Out of Moncofa, we passed through an area of really tall reeds - taller than the tall ones we are now used to here. In the distance we could also see cliffs and mountains. All interesting landforms to entertain us.

The castle at Almenara, with its two watch towers, was visible from a long way away, and with the town at the base of its hill.

"El Cid took the castle after the battle of Tévar in 1098. El Cid, who had already taken control of Valencia, began the siege of Almenara, where the Almoravid governor of Játiva had retired. After a siege of three months, the Almoravid troops surrended.

The fortress was originally made of three main parts: the castle, which is currently in very poor condition, was placed in the highest part of the hill; before the castle entrance was the albacara, including the old Mosque and reservoir, whose trace is still visible; the towers, which locals refer to as L'Agüelet and L'Agüeleta (granpa and granma), are situated on the east and west sides of the hills, flanking the main structure. They are well preserved, though the latter was restored in the 19th century to set up an optical telegraph.

The military importance of the castle was due to its position, situated halfway along the plains and the coast of Castellón and Valencia and on the way of the natural path leading to Aragón."

btw, El Cid (1043-1099) was a knight that came out of Burgos. He took Valencia from the moors and ruled it until his death in 1099. At that point his wife took over, until 1102, when the moors reconquered the place. The moors called him As Sayyid - the lord- which evolved to El Cid.

We had been noticing a vine growing up some citrus trees and began speculating on what it might be. It is interesting because of its large pods, and those pods turn out to be full of fluff.

At the outskirts of Sagunto is an unmarked set of arches. Could be Roman?

The town is topped by a castle and has other attractions, like a Jewish quarter. It was nicely covered by Scott and Rachael and we would like to see it all. But we fought headwinds all day and arrived too late for any sightseeing. Maybe next time. It's easy to get here from Valencia.

Having read Scott and Rachael's account of their rather strange BnB hostess, we were concerned that we might land the same one. But no, our lady was very nice though also not speaking much or any English. The place was also gorgeous inside. It's called Domus Atilia. This is burned into my brain a bit, because some kind of variants of these words have to do with the wifi network and password. However no amount of divining what the printed instructions on this might mean produced a successful logon. You are therefore reading this courtesy of Lycamobile France and a hotspot thrown up by a phone.

Nice place, but better get those wifi instructions nailed down.

We are looking forward to smooth sailing into Valencia tomorrow, including about half the distance on a greenway.

Today's ride: 63 km (39 miles)
Total: 3,360 km (2,087 miles)

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