Móra d'Ebre

Once again last night we didn’t get a lot of sleep, what seemed to be the perfect camp turned into a sound capture zone for a locals party. I had slept through it all until 2am when they cranked the volume right up and I woke up wondering what the thudding sound was. Also Ellie had a fever and spent most of the night either sweating or shivering.
I was awake at 7:30 and wanted to go in a bike ride but after 2 coffees and not alot of sleep I didn’t leave until nearly 9am. I left Ellie in bed to catch up on some sleep.
I set off towards Mora d’Ebre following the path of the river. I went through olive groves, pomegranates, oranges and lemon fields before coming to Mora d’Ebre town and keeping the river on my right I followed a disused tarmac road until I reached the edge of the national park.
From there I turned inland and started climbing at 6% rising to a maximum of 10% at it’s steepest point. I stopped for a break at what I thought was the top of the mountain for about 20 mins, had a couple of breakfast bars before setting off again.
Unfortunately for me that wasn’t the top and I did another 5km of climbing before finally starting the descent on rough gravel.
It was a fast descent too, a top speed of 54kph overtaking 2 cars who were trundling along cautiously trying not to rip the sump out of the bottom until they saw me and pulled over to let me pass.
Before I knew it I was back on ground level, albeit a little lumpy in cycling terms, rolling up and down through yet more fields of olive trees, and as I looked back I could see the summit I had just climbed. It was quite incredible.
I arrived back at Wanda with 46 kilometres under my belt just after 11:30am. Ellie had literally been up for 5 minutes so I was glad I didn’t rush to get back.
I had a quick wash while Ellie fried me up a Spanish Tortilla and after eating, we headed back into Miravet to climb the steps to Castel de Miravet.
It was a tough climb reaching the castle and we had to stop a couple of times for Ellie to recover as she was still feeling a little rough, but the views on the way up were incredible so stopping was well worth it.
Finally we reached Castil de Miravet. It is a massive castle made from huge 2 foot granite blocks. It was originally a Moorish stronghold until the knights Templar moved into it in the 11th century, at that point the surrounding town grew in size and wealth. Inside of the castle everything seemed huge aswell. A stable block that used to have 2 floors, a cistern for holding the water, a granary and cellar that was bigger that a small English church and a massive dining room where you could see the ancient pillars and a gunpowder room. The icing on the cake for the whole castle was the church room that has been almost fully restored to it’s former glory. It had a massive arched ceiling with pillars either end, the original paint was still on parts of the walls with red lines running horizontally and black lines running up and down vertically. It must have been an incredible sight in it’s time.
Mid afternoon we went back to Wanda so Ellie could rest up for the rest of the day and keep out of the sun, it has been very hot the last couple of days which definitely beats the gloomy greys of England.Read more