La Fontacalda & Azud de Lledò

The church bells rang all night. Every 15 minutes but I slept through them. However Ellie did not and this morning she felt really rough, with a headache, sore throat and a cough.
Wanda was down to just 1 bar on the battery monitor. Normally she is in 3 out of 4. So we spent an hour deciding whether to drive back on ourselves to the town of Bennisanet and get a hook up for €10 for 24 hours or drive to Bot, where there was a campsite by the viaverde greenway but it was €23 plus €4 for electric.
The problem was, it was nearing 10am and the cloud across the mountains was really thick and black so there would be no power to the solar.
We decided on going to La Fontacalda warm springs which is where I joined the viaverde greenway yesterday. It was only about 2 miles away but it was at the bottom of the mountain and we were already here. If it wasn’t sunny at the bottom we would call it a day and go to Bennisanet and hook up.
At the bottom of the mountain in the former Prat de Compte station car park it was blazing hot sunshine and I parked Wanda in a sunny spot and the solar started working. We decided we would visit the warm springs and see what it was doing when we returned.
This time we turned left on the viaverde greenway and straight through 2 tunnels, 1 at 300 meters and the next at 170 meters. As we emerged from the second tunnel there was a bridge to cross to continue, or a path that led underneath the bridge and to La Fontacalda. We took the path down, winding for a few hundred meters down the mountainside until we came to a bushy hedgerow of small trees and as we followed the trail along the side and through, we were at the most beautiful river gorge with a bridge and 2 sets of steps. The left hand side leading up the mountainside and the right hand side leading to a lower concrete platform with a small square pool of warm water and a path that led up to a church. The small square pool of warm water was the warm spring, and compared to the river it was warm. But definitely not hot spring warm so we didn’t venture in.
We decided to climb the steps up the side of the mountain for as long as Ellie could handle it and we had the most spectacular views of the gorge and little waterfalls. It looked like something out of Jurassic Park.
After a bit of climbing Ellie was having trouble catching her breath so we turned around and went to have a look at the church. It was an incredible building built in 1789 and although we couldn’t get inside today there is a square cut in the door so people can still view it. It smelt like all churches.
We went back to Wanda and after another debate on what we should do I decided to take Ellie to the viaduct and waterfall I had seen yesterday as there was a big car park.
We drove the 9 miles there in about 15 minutes on absolutely dead roads and on arriving we found the car park empty and parked Wanda in the sun. The solar was doing it’s job atlast and we were making decent power.
After a late lunch we headed down to the waterfalls which was part of the same river we had just visited and it was a natural swimming area. I decided to go for a swim and even though I stood in the water past my waist for 10 minutes it didn’t warm up. I decided to just go for it in the end and just dived in completely submerging myself. It was icy cold but refreshing at the same time. I did find a warm spot that the sun was shiny on and I stayed in for about 10 minutes until the fish got a little to interested in me.
We sat on the side for about 20 minutes and Ellie fed the fish some crusts off the bread and then we went back to Wanda so Ellie could have a nap while I fixed an inner tube.
At 6pm we were just settling in for the night on our own in the car park and as the sun set, the mosquitoes came out. Even with the fly screens down the buggers got in and started eating us. We closed the windows and started splatting the ones that had got in and just as we thought we had got them all another one would appear. With the windows and hatches shut it got very stuffy, very quickly and we decided we probably wouldn’t sleep very well here so at 7pm we drove back to Prat de Compte where it was much cooler and also much windier on the mountainside. Ellie said she would sleep with earplugs in so she wouldn’t hear the church bells and that was a small sacrifice to make for getting a good nights sleep.Read more