Hermann’s holiday in Huesca

In which Hermann takes a gentle day not going up into the Pyrenees.

The day starts with Covid testing in the library at the Serras hotel. The LTF tests are as quick as ever but are validated by An Official Letter from a Proper Person that they came out negative. Armed with these Sid and Doris head with confidence toward Santander and the ferry to Plague Island.

A walk after breakfast takes us back along the docks where we find this repurposed ocean tug, Open Arms, for pulling refugees out of the sea.

Further along we find the very elegant opening bridge that means the marina does not interrupt the boardwalk. Clearly this is more popular in summer where tourists are fined for buying from pedlars (described rather picturesquely as “blanket salesmen”), which Sid says is more economically effective than fining the pedlars.

From here you have good view of the HG Wells type towers that carry the gondolas from town up to Montjuic. This is on the list for next time as Montjuic Park hosted a Grand Prix and bike track from 1933 to 1986. It is now used for demonstration runs. 

Hermann is brought round looking suspiciously dusty. The hotel has been keen to shield us from where he has been kept at enormous expense (yes, even more expensive than Teal’s stay in the Very Grand Lake Como hotel), which we now believe to be someone’s grain storage warehouse. The route out of Barcelona is painless and we hum along with not too much mileage required to make Huesca, en route for Pamplona on Tuesday and the ferry on Wednesday.

Sid and Doris take the opportunity to get off the main roads and trickle through foggy agrarian countryside. We stop in a place of nowhere for lunch called Balaguer. Sid suggests that a creperie is a good call, being quick and predictably OK. Two cheese and ham crepes later Sid asks Madame where she learnt her English. Romania. It’s where I am from. Why stop here? It’s fine and, we infer, better than home. We are planning to go to Romania this summer and will report back.

As the Pyrenees get closer, Doris takes more pictures of long straight roads, really just to observe that they don’t only happen in America.

Also pictures of the scenery which features some extremely odd-looking regular sandy hills.  So regular that they look like spoil heaps except they are too large and go on for too long.  What sort of erosion happened here to create these?  Mr Google turns up some helpful essays on Geology of the Pyrenees but no helpful essays on Geology of the Long Dullish Flat Area Between Barcelona and Huesca.

And so into Huesca, past nameless castles and monasteries that Doris instantly researches giving names and dignity to the scenery. Think of each castle as a police station in a country where the police are for the protection of the state rather than the populous.

Sid and Doris look for items to amuse our fellow fans of boats, planes, trains and automobiles. Apart from tractors we are a bit light on conveyances today. Sometimes we can find a plane on a stick. Today’s is possibly a first, a boat on a stick.

Finally a wander around Huesca where the cathedral, the town museum and museum of pedagogy are shut. A shame about that last for Sid, mentor and man of wonder to the young readers of Bishop’s Stortford.

Doris finds some street art as a counterpoint to the baroque twiddlery we missed in the cathedral.

And finally, as newscasters say when about to introduce the news lollipop, pictures of skating penguins guided by small children. It is a Happy New Year.

We hope Huesca has a bumper year. Sid and Doris start by awarding the Best Value Stop to the town where

• a large hotel room with views across the town was €97
• the hotel had a pleasant cafe area with tasty and inexpensive beer
• a fab cafe dinner of salads composed, risottos most creamy, crema limona with gin and tonic sorbet plus three glasses of wine and two very substantial Camparis with a tip was €40! (Sid is not generally one for shriek marks. Just read that again.) [Which, btw, was less than one night’s charge for Hermann to stay in the grain store – D.]
• the overnight parking, handily opposite the Police station, was €4
• breakfast was lavish with smashed eggs at €10.

The Best Value Stop of Hermann’s holiday goes to Huesca. Though Huesca is still Huesca while Granada is…..