Lake Negratín to Galera

Last night we slept well, it was really quiet but it was also really cold. The coldest it has been except when we were travelling down through France. It was just 3°c outside at 7:30am and only 9°c inside.
We had nothing planned for today and I thought we would be staying here or moving down a little further to the badlands but after breakfast I took the drone out for half an hour to photograph the lake managed to get some shots of the badlands in the background so I decided we didn’t need to go any further down.
Ellie wanted to head to Galera. She has been looking at cave houses online for years and Galera is home of the cave houses so we plotted the sat Nav and headed northbound.
Our first stop was an open air museum called Castiltón Alto. It’s not really a museum but more of an open archeological site. We found out why it had the word Alto in the title when we had to climb 150 meters to reach the site.
The tour starts at the highest point where the uppermost necropolis is, here there were the remains of a Skelton that was buried in a building under the floor. The site dates back to the Bronze Age and it was the practise to bury the dead family members in the house either in a pit in the floor, or a small alcove in the wall or if they were a small child in a ceramic jar and buried.
We followed the steps around the top of the Alto and started to come down and here we saw the remains of Bronze Age buildings. It was amazing to see wooden posts left in the ground that were once supports for the roofs.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to look much further around as it was closing at 1pm and reopened at 4pm so our visit was cut short but that gave us a chance to head into town.
Both Ellie and I have googled Galera town and the streets look really tight and narrow and although the village is small it seemed quite compact so we didn’t think we would ever get parked actually in town.
I found a place on park4night right in the centre of town in the town square and after abit of negotiating the streets we managed to get parked in the town square right outside a restaurant with the church in front of us and the museum on the road behind us.
We now knew everything in town was closed until atleast 4pm and infact the museum didn’t open again until 5pm so we treated ourselves to a lunch out at the nearby restaurant and then went for a walk around the town.
Ellie had spotted a glass walkway about 200 meters up the side of one of the hills so we first hiked up to that passing by beautiful cave houses. They were all painted white but actually well camouflaged into the scenery. We walked past a lot without even noticing them at first. Of course the ones that were just abandoned I went in. It was amazing to think that over 100 years ago people lived in them.
We finally reached the platform and had a spectacular 360° view of Galera and the surrounding landscape. It did look beautiful and very Star Wars like. We then followed a concrete path along the top of the mountain to the cave houses at the other end of the village and walked down looking at them and Ellie was telling me which ones she had seen online. It is a beautiful area but it gets cold in the winter so it’s not a good winter get away zone. I think we’ve realised that Wanda is our happy place, not a region or town or even a country.
We headed back to Wanda, and after a little siesta and rehydration we headed for the museum at 5pm.
As we left Wanda Ellie noticed that the church doors were now open and we do love a European church so we headed in there first and true to form it was covered with gold leaf, amazing paintings and statues and beautiful stained glass. Ellie and I aren’t religious atall but we do appreciate the history of these places. This church was built in the 16th century.
From the church we headed around the corner to the museum and couldn’t believe our own eyes when at 5pm on a Sunday evening the museum had just opened.
We were greeted by a lovely Spanish lady, paid our €2 entry fee and she gave us a 15 minute intro of how the museum came to be built on donations from the local community. The museum itself was filled with the artifacts from Castleton Alto aswell as Roman artifacts covered over 3 floors and the ground floor was actually a cave and one part was fitted out as a cave house and the other half was fitted out as a Bodega with huge wine Vats from the 1700’s. It was a very impressive museum.
After the museum we headed just out of town to the car park of the Necropolis. We were going to look around but it was just closing so instead we went for a walk down the road.
About 1/2 mile into the walk I spotted some abandoned cave houses way up on a hill so I decided to scramble up the vertical climb and as I came to the ledge where the cave houses were I was greeted by hundreds of bones. At first I thought wow, I’ve just discovered a new burial site and shouted at Ellie to climb up and join me and as she was scrambling up I realised they were actually animal bones. Probably sheep.
I ventured into the cave houses and they were massive in there original state with the roofs in a precarious state of collapse, but I could still get inside and get some great pictures.
Then it was back to Wanda as the sun started to set, the temperature was already dropping and it was already 15°c at 6pm. It looks like it’s set to be another cold night.Read more