Arnedillo, Herce & Calahorra

We had a pretty good nights sleep except for the moron vanlifers, one turned up at 9:30pm and parked right next to us. Considering there were another 20 free spaces that was unfortunate. One turned up at 8:30pm and decided to leave at 3:30am. They weren’t parked right next to us but we did hear there 20 doors banging shut so they might as well have been and the last ones turned up at 11:30pm and parked right between 2 other motorhomers. There’s no doubt about it, vanlifers are selfish arseholes.
We were up early at 6:30am, we wanted to get into the hotsprings nice and early so at 7:15am after a coffee we headed back down the hill to the hotsprings. It was 11°c outside so it was cold and felt fresh.
When we got to the hotsprings there were already 3 locals in it, 2 ladies and a man. One of the ladies got out as we were getting changed and is I walked past her to get in she had a towel wrapped around her waist but her boobs were hanging over the top. I didn’t know where to look so concentrated on the steps going down and then she said good morning. I still didn’t know were to look as I said hello and good morning back and literally fell into the hotsprings and ducked my head under.
It was toasty and crystal clear this morning and we had the whole middle pool to ourselves. It was lovely.
We spent about 20 minutes in the pools boiling our brains until finally I admitted that the heat was getting to me and we should go back to Wanda.
We were back at Wanda and having breakfast for 8am, and we both felt pretty chilled out after our morning dip and had to force ourselves to get going again. Ellie washed her hair, I tidied up and put things away and by 9:30am we were ready to leave.
We had to pay to stay in the Airè at Arnedillo which broke our run of free camps of 37 nights. They only charged us for the time we spent there so it cost around £7:50 for a nights parking, and 2 uses of the thermal springs which we thought was a bargain.
We turned right out of Arnedillo and headed back down the mountain road we came down yesterday 6 miles to the town of Enciso.
Enciso is famous for having dinosaur footprints which is what we had come to see. There is a long walking route of 6km and an even longer driving route called the route of the dinosaurs and there is a boardwalk. We did the boardwalk after spending 20 minutes trying to find it, and it was quite impressive. The walk takes you up a steep plateau of rock and in the rock are dinosaur footprints. There is actually thousands but not all are properly formed but the ones that are have been painted around so you can see how big they are. At the end of the boardwalk were crocodile scrape marks and tail marks from where they had pulled themselves along on what was once a river bed. It was quite fascinating and all for free.
From there our plan was to head to the town of Calahorra, pop into Lidl and do a restock and then head to the airè a mile away and investigate the town but that’s not how our day went.
We passed back through Arnedillo and then into the town of Herce, it was here that Ellie noticed hundreds of vultures quite low, so I found a parking spot and pulled over. There were also hundreds of cave houses up in the side of the mountain so we decided to head up a little track to so Ellie could video the vultures and I wanted to get into a cave house. The vultures soared above us and Ellie was having a nightmare trying to video them from her phone and said she wanted to get higher, but the track we were on didn’t take us much higher and we couldn’t get to the cave houses.
We decided to leave Wanda where she was and walked up through the dead town of Herce until we came to the sign for the hermitage and the castle viewpoint. Ellie reckoned she could video the vultures there and we turned left off the main high street, through the town square where they had croquet flowers onto all the lamp posts and then we started going uphill. It was a mega climb upto 540ft of 1.5 miles and we hadn’t taken a drink or food. Luckily on this occasion god provided us with a water fountain outside the hermitage for which we were very grateful.
The castle was 13th century, it was only the remains but it all adds to the fascinating history of the area and we could even get on the roof. This is when we saw the vultures had started to roost on a not to distant mountain top because the sun had gone in, so we waited about 20 mins to see if they would start circling again but they didn’t. That’s when I noticed a tiny goat trail heading up that mountain, so I told Ellie to wait on a ledge by the castle and I would climb up with my camera. Get some good shots and scare the vultures and they would fly past the castle and Ellie could video them. Off I went, up the side of the mountain using the goat trail, it was a lot steeper than it looked and extremely slippery on the loose stone but finally I got to the top, cut across through the rough and thorny bushes until I was around 50 meters away from the vultures. Just as I got my camera out they spotted me and one by one they took off like a squadron of fighters leaving the airfield.
Coming back down I looked at the ledge where I left Ellie but couldn’t see her, she also wasn’t at the foot of the track I was on and as I glanced towards the castle I just caught sight of her pink bag on her back as she scrambled up the side of the mountain where the castle was. It was a proper funny sight as I saw her stop for a few minutes because she couldn’t work out how to get back to the top.
Back together again we marched back down the hill, into town and then back to Wanda. It was now 2:30pm and we had,had a proper exploring day.
It was 15 miles to Calahorra and stopping at Lidl our first impression of the town was it was busy, built up and abit of a hole. I offered to find somewhere else but I checked the map and the airè here is just outside of town so we headed for that to see what it was like.
We finally parked up just after 5pm and we were starving because we had skipped lunch. The airè is on the outskirts of the city with a view of the cathedral and monastery and as the sun set it all became lit up. There’s only us and one other motorhome here who turned up at 7pm and the car park is massive with 8 dedicated motorhome, it’s not glamorous or scenic like many of our other stops but we got here late so to us it’s just a place to put our heads down for the night.Leer más