La Cabrera
Sunday's excursion has left some nice photos. I'm really diggin this digital camera business, but fear it's made me even more snap happy than normal. We set off from La Cabrera, about an hour north of Madrid. The first thing we came across, after the cemetary, were some cows being all moo-like. We were heading up towards a monastery located outside town, and so passed the stations of the cross alongside the road. They were plane granite pillars with a sort of peeky window in them. The view as we got up towards the monastery was stunning.The monastery itself was very interesting. I especially liked the church apse, which was original. 9th-century, I believe. My friend Pedro, the caretaker/tour man and I had a nice long chat while he told us the history of the building and land. Chilly work, though! The buildings were located between a ridge and a hill, which we later climbed, and there were a great many birds of prey flying around as we talked and walked.
As we walked over towards the hill, we ran into some snow, but scarcely enough to get our boots wet, and some rusty bits and barb wire. We walked through the remains of some Bronze and Iron age settlements. It was difficult to make out what was what, as there was absolutely no indication. But we did find what seemed to be a well and lots of circular piles of stones, presumably the fallen down remains of walls.
After all this fresh air, lunch was in order, but again, a very cold business! We then tried to find a way down off that rock, during which time Pedro slipped on some mossy/icy bits and apparently narrowly escaped falling to his doom. I was taking silly pictures of moss and icy bits at the time and missed the whole thing. Unfortunately, the way down we found was through a wood with tons of undergrowth and rabid brambles trying to steal my knit cap! There were pretty views through the trees, though, when you weren't too busy tearing your pants to look at them.
When we got to the bottom, we headed for the area of pools we'd seen from up top. There seemed to be a lot more water down there than we actually found on the ground. We did find one lovely pool though, which provided lots of very pretty shots which virtually took themselves.
Back to the village and a nice café con leche in one of the village bars, during which I thanked my lucky stars I only spent two years in a small town in Colorado and 1 1/2 in one in Canada, and tried to figure out which of the youth was gay, and who the village drunks were. Maybe the same person: it was Sunday afternoon at 4:00, and the youth were with their friends having mixed drinks and smoking up a storm.
posted by Ned @ 2:18 PM
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