No Room At Any Of The Inn’s !!

Whilst Shazza had been enjoying herself in the sea, and apart from me being entertained watching her, and the other’s, battle with the waves, as well as obviously being engaged in a fair bit of both ‘people’ and ‘boat’ watching, I also spent some time researching routes, and accommodations, for the next part of our adventure. On my original route I had planned to head a little further North, but go a little more inland, I had been using a guide book that gave ‘Spanish Driving Routes’, and had found one route in the area that would cover two small historic towns/villages in the one day, the first being a relatively short ninety-minute drive away from ‘Peñíscola’ and, the second just a further one hour drive away from their. But by the time it would have taken us to drive to and between both locations, and spent time visiting them both on foot, making the stops worthwhile and doing these places some justice, it would be time for an overnight stop. The frustration came when I tried to find suitable available accommodations at such short notice, in or near these locations, and which also had on-site, or nearby, parking. But unless we wanted to book a whole ‘Casa Rural’ property, for a minimum of at least five nights, then it was not going to be and the one’s that did let out individual rooms were all fully booked 🤷‍♂️ As for Hotels, well we could forget that, they too were very much a case of ‘No Room At Any Of The Inn’s’, perhaps if we had been travelling astride a Donkey, with Shazza in the family way, we may have been offered a stable, although they would have probably have then told us to come back at Christmas 😂 We did consider whether it would be best to just bite the bullet and rent one of the ‘available’ Casa Rural accommodations for the week, using it as a base camp, but most of these places were out in the wild and the places of interest to us, or worthy of visiting, would have involved driving miles each and every day, returning to the accommodation at night, we didn’t fancy that idea. I didn’t give up though and, after running out of all of the usual options, I just started to scroll through ‘Google’ using the search term ‘Places To See” and came across this……………

Further research revealed that in this small hillside town they also ran a tourist train that, on certain days of the week, took you around the local area, to other small villages and stopping at scenic locations along the route, each trip lasting three and a half hours and running during the late afternoon from 16:00-19:30. So, with the River and Thermal Spring, ‘Fuente de Los Banjos’ and the tourist train trip, this sounded ideal, but to be able to enjoy these we needed to find suitable nearby accommodation 🤷‍♂️

Within this relatively small town of ‘Montanejos’ we saw a 3* Hotel advertised, it looked perfect, sat overlooking the small ‘Rio Mijares’, and directly below the hotel, less than 25 metres away, was a ‘River Club Restaurant’ which also had its own swimming pool, which, for Hotel guests was ‘Free’ to use, the bonus being that the hotel was also just 100 metres walk from where the ‘Tourist Train’ departed and only a fifteen minute walk from the ‘Fuente de Los Banjos’. What’s that saying, ‘When something sounds too good to be true’ ? So what were the chances of them having a room available for the three night’s that we would require ? I got myself ready for another huge disappointment 🤷‍♂️

Shazza looked on our usual on-line hotel booking site and to our absolute amazement discovered that their was availability for the three nights that we required, so she hastily made the booking and had the reservation confirmed 🙏

I planned the route, however, instead of our intended direction being North, this particular location whilst still heading inland, it would be two hour’s South but, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’ as the saying goes. However, the journey would take us up into and through National Park Areas, up into the mountains. I started to get excited, not just about the destination, but the road journey to it, for whilst Shazza had just had her preferred beach resort break, now it was my turn to enjoy the more rural and natural landscapes that I particularly enjoy, although, even Shazza commented that she too was looking forward to a slightly quieter environment now, although I reminded her that if these accommodations were all generally still fully booked, how quiet they may be could be quite a different matter 🤔

We didn’t bother with breakfast at the hotel on our morning of departure from Peniscola, first stop was a quick re-fuel just ten minutes down the road, we didn’t really need to, it was only an 80 mile journey and we had half a tank of fuel, but we know how scarce fuel stations can be in these inland areas, well, scarce of the more branded one’s like Repsol, Cepsa, Galp etc. and we had learnt a rather expensive lesson, twice in fact, in the past about using fuel from the more locally branded one’s 😲 At least we would have enough fuel to get us, not just to our next destination, the small town of ‘Montanejos’, but also to the next location beyond that, wherever that maybe as that was still in the research and planning stage 😳 Shazza is finally beginning to come around to my way thinking, with the ‘Planning Ahead’ business, as there were several places within this large Valencia area, towns and villages, that she would have liked to have stopped at, for a day or two, but where ‘suitable’ accommodation was not available. But life is a learning curve as they say, although I did take the opportunity to remind her that our ‘former’ travels where a little more flexible, when of course we were travelling in our own ‘home on wheels’ 😉 You may well ask how that comment went down with her, let me just say that my black eye now matches her purple nose 😂

When I looked at my ‘paper’ road map, before planning the route using ‘Google Maps’, I had expected the first part of our journey to have been on the A7 motorway for the first part, up until ‘Castellon’, before then heading inland, but ‘Google’ took us straight onto the CV13, so we decided to go with it. It was actually a very good road and relatively traffic free, compared to the Motorway. However, for anyone from the Valencia area, who may be reading these rambles, I wholeheartedly apologise for probably sounding a little disparaging about the landscapes of this region in my previous ramble, for just minutes away from the coast we entered terrific lush green vistas that were a feast for the eyes and, as we ventured further inland and uphill, the scenery just got better and better.

We have often heard other’s use the expression, ‘When you go away, once you return you really appreciate what you have on your own doorstep’. Well my comment, and title of my last ramble, is certainly beginning to ring true and now Shazza is beginning to realise that fact too, for yes we do actually already live in a lovely beach resort holiday location ourselves, so why on earth do we need to go to another holiday beach location just to appreciate what we already have 🤷‍♂️ But, as she too pointed out to me, we also live within a thirty-minute drive of some beautiful lush green forested mountains, with rivers, lakes, thermal springs and even Castles. So I guess that whilst we are enjoying our individual aspects of this particular road trip, you could say that it is also actually turning out to be a ‘reflective trip’, personally for the both of us, and so, whilst we do not want to give up on exploring other ‘Regions’ in Spain, or even other Countries in Europe, we are now in total agreement that, as our home Region of Andalusia is actually the second largest region in Spain, perhaps we should spend a little more time exploring much more of our own inland areas too, and I guess the occasional beach location wouldn’t harm either considering that in Andalusia we have both the Mediterranean and Atlantic Coastlines to choose from 🤔

It wasn’t long before we found ourselves heading up into the thicker forested mountain roads, the CV10, CV13 and then CV20, which I have to say, were all extremely good, albeit a lot more twisting and winding, which is why 80 miles on these roads takes longer than 80 miles on faster motorway routes, but the drive is certainly far more exhilarating, in a good, not a scary way, and as for the scenery, well all we could say, around almost every corner, was how ‘Absolutely Stunningly Beautiful’ the scenery was, and picture perfect, with a cloud free gloriously blue sky as a background. Shazza may not be into photography herself, she enjoys seeing the landscapes through her own eyes, but I think that she may now also be beginning to appreciate why I feel the need to capture these views, to perhaps look back upon in year’s to come, and of course, to share with you my reader’s, and who knows, maybe provide some inspiration for you to take your own road trips, but please remember that having an OCD Buddy is not always a bad thing and could save some disappointment 😉

Of course, I took dozens more scenic landscapes throughout the journey, but to be honest, I am sure you can visualise it for yourself with the few that I have included above, but it really is a case of having to see it with your own eyes, to fully appreciate the expanse and beauty of the surrounding landscapes. Perhaps the one downside to these roads is the fact that there is a severe lack of ‘safe’ stopping places to take the photographs, so the majority of the time, provided that, as on this occasion, I am the one in the passenger seat with the camera, they have to be taken from a moving vehicle which, sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn’t 🤷‍♂️

We were in no hurry as ‘officially’ we could not check in to our hotel until 3pm, Sat Nav had us getting there at 1pm 😲 But we decided on a ‘Brunch’ stop, if we could find one in one of the small villages or towns along our route, we could see several picturesque places as we drove along, but many of them were up in the hills and too far off our particular route, however eventually, and we nearly missed the turning, we saw a sign that said ‘Cafe’, right on the turn where it was located but which you couldn’t see until you were virtually on top of it, so we followed the narrow gravel road until it came to the outskirts of what looked like a very small hamlet, one of those one horse sort of places, but it had the most amazing views. This was not a typical Cafe/Bar, but a small cafeteria that occupied a small corner of the local community hall. Outside, a handful of white plastic tables and chairs, at one, their were four elderly ladies sat chatting, they stopped their conversation as we approached, smiled and said ‘Buenas Dias’, as if we were regular faces in the village, we returned the pleasantry. A very pleasant young girl who was inside, took our order, our usual, ‘Cafe con Leche y Tostado’s’, she told us to take a seat outside and she would bring them to us.

The four ladies departed before we had finished our very late breakfast, but they stopped at our table, wished us “Ustedes una bien Dia”, or words to that effect, (Have a nice day) and then “Adios” as they walked off down another dirt track in the direction of the small unassuming village. We resumed our journey for a few more miles and then, as we crossed a bridge that spanned a small babbling river we saw a parking area just up from the river bank below, so of course, we stopped to have a look. Once we had walked down the small hill, we saw a traditional old style drinking fountain in front of a brick building, which we discovered were Public Toilets, although the doors were locked, a good job neither of us needed to use the facilities, albeit there were obviously plenty of trees and bushes if we had been that desperate 🤭 A gravel path ran down towards the river, well more a stream really, and then we saw a smaller bridge that ran across it, to one side there was a grassed area, with a small wooden fence around it, which had the words ‘Bar Area’ painted on it, so we guessed that this was a picnic spot primarily for the local residents, as it was not indicated on the map as a ‘tourist attraction’

We continued our drive through even more lush green mountain vista’s and headed towards the town of ‘Onda’ where, quite conveniently, and somewhat surprisingly, there was a large ‘Mercadona’ supermarket, we needed to stock up on Coffee, Sugar, bottled water and some fresh fruit. None of the hotels we had stayed at so far had tea or coffee making facilities, although they all had a small fridge, but not a mini-bar as such, as their was not even a bottle of water or soft drinks inside, fortunately though, we are quite accustomed to this here in Spain, so we always take our own travel kettle, cups and any other provisions we may need.

Although we had attempted to delay our arrival at the hotel, until nearer the official check-in time, we failed miserably, but hoped that they would permit us to at least park the car in their car park where we could leave our luggage until the time came to check-in, then we would go for a wander through the small town. We pressed the buzzer at the parking barrier, the lady who answered asked for our names and then raised the barrier. We left our bags in the car and reported to the reception where the very pleasant receptionist proceeded to check us in to our room, informing us that it had already been cleaned and so was ready for us to occupy. There were actually two receptionists on duty, both spoke limited but reasonable English, but they also acknowledged the fact, in a positive way, that we were also communicating with them in Spanish, “Ustedes Espanyol es Muy Bien” they said, (Your Spanish is very good), we were well chuffed, even if they were just being polite as we know our limitations and that our sentence construction was probably not perfect, but understandable, which is what counts in my book 😉However, our check-in process was interrupted, on several occasions, by them having to also answer incoming phone calls, we could hear them saying to each and every caller without exception, “Lo Siento, No es possible, Hotel Completo” (Sorry, it isn’t possible the hotel is fully booked), I couldn’t understand why they bothered answering if that was the case, it wasn’t as if they were losing any immediate business, but there again they may have been advance bookings, not everyone books within 24 hour’s of requiring a room 😂 Shazza and I looked at each other, we were thinking, but not speaking, exactly the same thought, ‘How lucky were we to have booked when we had’ 😲 We went straight back down to the car and got our belongings and then made our way to our room.

We had stayed at two 4* hotels so far on this trip, and we had no complaints with either the facilities or the rooms in either, but this was a 3*, so we were not expecting quite the same amount of grandeur, or size of room. However, sometimes you get the best surprises when you least expect them, we were not expecting the very spacious room, which matched each of the previous one’s, or a large quite modern en-suite bathroom, with one of the best showers that we had yet experienced, by way of water pressure and very hot water. We were not expecting two full size ‘double’ beds, a modern automated and amazingly efficient Air Con system, or a 60” flatscreen TV that was more like having a Home cinema screen, and we certainly were not expecting a balcony, upon which their was a domestic sized clothes drying rack and also two chairs and a patio table, but best of all, we were not expecting the most amazing view from the balcony, or through the full floor to ceiling glazed patio doors. “Are you certain that this is only a 3* Hotel ?” I asked Shazza. This was, by quite some margin, the best of the three hotels that we had stayed in so far, perhaps ‘fate’ had worked in our favour once again, directing us towards this small town in the Valencia mountains and to this particular hotel, for it just seemed absolutely perfect, in every way 🙏

Getting into our room so early, we then decided to go straight to the ‘Tourist Train’ office in the town, a five minute walk, to see if we could get tickets for that evenings trip. Unfortunately, it was already fully booked, so we booked for the following evening. We decided that we may as well go on a bit of a walk around the town as we now had some time on our hands, and to get our bearings for a deeper exploration at some point over the next two days 😂😂 I laugh because, the town was that small that our very short reconnaissance ended up being the full tour, a handful of small Cafe/Bars, a Church, a Police station, a Chemist, a small Supermarket, a ‘Panaderia’ (bread shop) and a handful of other small local traders and, ‘three’, yes three other, but smaller, hotels 😲 If all of these hotels were full that would probably be more than treble the size of the population of this town 🤭 Oh well, we could now return to the room, have a nice coffee sat admiring the views from the balcony and then, perhaps some time for a period of personal contemplation before dinner 😴

However, although this mountain town may have been small, it had everything that I was particularly looking for on this visit. A beautiful riverside restaurant with tremendous food, that catered for both of our dietary requirements, not one mention of ‘Goats Cheese Salad’ which impressed Shazza as she had numerous other tasty alternatives that made a nice change for her, both on the Starters and Main Courses, as for desserts, well let’s just say that she was on holiday and so probably not quite so disciplined with that particular aspect 😂 As far as activities were concerned, the beach club also had the lovely swimming pool, which had a small poolside bar that served ice-cold ‘Alhambra’ beer, I am not much of a beer drinker but I have taken a liking for this particular brand, although one bottle is plenty otherwise it tends to bloat me, unlike my more usual Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 We would spend ‘at least’ one morning, or afternoon here at the pool, but their was also the ‘Fuente de Los Banos’, only a short fifteen minute riverside walk away, which we would visit and have a swim in, and then there was the three and a half hour tourist train in the evening, so anything over and above those things, in our short visit here, would just be a complete bonus. And no, I have not mentioned the weather, well when you are dining out in the evening at 9pm, dressed in smart Shorts and casual collared short-sleeved shirts, it say’s it all really 🥵

We had paid for ‘Room Only’ on this occasion, €18 for breakfast, that was the total not per person, seemed just a bit steep for the little we ate, and we knew we could get our more usual breakfast’s for a total of €6 at a local Cafe/Bar. We tended not to eat lunches if we had a latish breakfast and so we had a nice three-course dinner in the evening’s.

So, on Day 2 we started with a rather leisurely morning before having a late breakfast (Brunch) at a small Cafe that we had discovered on our first, and only, town wander. We returned to the hotel and got changed into our swimwear and spent a good couple of hours at the pool before then getting changed and getting ready to board our tourist train. We were two of twenty other passengers, but we were the only ‘foreigners’, the remainder were all Spanish tourist’s on their own vacation. Tony the driver, and tour guide, spoke a little bit of English, and after doing his commentaries in the local lingo he would then come and check with us what we had, or hadn’t, understood, then he would fill in the important essentials we had perhaps not grasped. At first we felt a little like outsider’s as the rest of our travel companions spoke very little English, the odd word here and there, but we soon bonded, talking to them in Spanish, albeit not perfect, they seemed to warm to us and as we got off the train at certain points to walk about they would engage in conversation with us, the usual stuff, ‘Where are we from ?’, then on discovering we lived in Spain, ‘Which part of Spain ?’, ‘How longs have we lived here ?’ all the usual sort of stuff, by the end of the tour, which ended up being a little over 4 hours 😲 we felt a part of the group and we were quite flattered at how many of them made a point of coming to say goodbye to us, as we disembarked to each go our separate ways. Just by coincidence the following morning, we were returning to the hotel after our Cafe breakfast and two ladies, who had been on the train tour, recognised us, before we had even seen or recognised them, and they shouted across the street to us, “Buenas Dias Eric y Sharon, Como Estas ?” 🥰

So as you can imagine, during the tour, my clicker finger never stopped, but I will not bore you with too many photo’s, just enough to give you a flavour 😉

Our first stop was at the top of the quite large and impressive Reservoir, the ‘Embassement d’Aronos’. The tourist train stopped and we all disembarked, Tony, the driver and tour guide, did a rather long talk about the history of the reservoir, the small hamlets that had to be evacuated and the families that had to be re-housed to make way for it. He gave lots of technical information, capacity of water, the area that it provides water to, and the future plan to make it a Hydro-Electric facility. We picked up most of the general stuff and so he just imparted some of the more technical stuff to us in English, we both tried very hard not to yawn though, but we appreciated his effort to make us feel part of the tour group. We then walked down to the base of the reservoir where we were lucky enough to see a mother deer with her fawn cross our path, then a large Eagle flew right across the top of our heads, too quick to get a photo of it though and the deer were gone too 😢 I said to Tony that it was good bit of marketing on his part, to bring an Eagle shaped drone and fly it just at the right time, he laughed and put his fingers to his lips, “Don’t tell the other’s” he said.

Near the base, a long bridge ran towards an entrance into the mountain. Tony explained that inside, it dropped 500 metres to where the machinery was located to control the flow of water and release the pressure when needed. He said that there was a continuous flow of water from the reservoir at the base, this was because one of the Reservoir’s sources was from the upper level of the ‘Rio Majares’ and that the construction of the reservoir could not restrict it’s flow, he took us down to show us it.

Now some of you know, from my previous rambles, that whenever I am amongst large clumps of rocks that I can often see faces of strange creatures looking down on me, I know, I should really seek out some medical help for my condition, or get some better glasses 🤭 or perhaps I have just watched too many horror type movies 🤷‍♂️

We were already into the second hour of the trip when we re-boarded the tourist train, but we continued onwards and upwards further into the mountains, the views were absolutely amazing and we were quite surprised at how many farmhouses and larger more luxurious houses there were, mostly hidden away from view in the dense forest, but we occasionally caught a glimpse of them, but never quite quick enough to point and shoot the camera ☹️

We found it quite amazing to think how they must have got the materials up here, to build Castles, Convents and Monasteries, let alone whole villages and towns and, as in the below photograph, on remote forested outcrops of rocks 🤷‍♂️

We had made our next stop in a small hilltop village, at a local Bar for a drink and comfort break, as I entered the small dark bar interior to order a couple of cold refreshing beers, there were four elderly men sat around a table playing dominoes, ‘Buenos Tardes’ they said in Unison, without lifting their eyes from the table, I made the instant assumption that this was quite obviously a regular stop for this tourist train as they did not appear at all surprised by this sudden intrusion. There were tables and chairs outside, under a canopy of hanging grape vines, full of their ripe green and red fruits, we all sat around chatting, well Shazza and I listened mainly and only interjected appropriately, when we understood what they were saying. One lady in our group came out with a jar of fresh natural honey she had purchased from the lady bar owner, Shazza suddenly disappeared, and then re-appeared moments later, clutching her own purchase of sweet nectar.

We had one final visit to a small town on the descent, it was already 7:30pm, the time we should have arrived back at our starting point 😲 Nobody was particularly bothered though, it had been a good trip with a great bunch of fellow tourists and we finally returned at 8pm, we were glad we had reserved dinner at the restaurant for 9pm, time enough to get showered and changed and although it was now dark, it was still very very warm and humid 🥵

Our final day arrived and it would be a more leisurely day, a late breakfast at our now usual Cafe in the town, then we returned to the hotel, got changed into our swimming gear, grabbed a towel and off we went on the fifteen minute walk to the ‘Fuente de Los Banos’. It was a pleasant enough walk along the wide riverside path, the sun was high in the sky but there was lots of shade along the route.

Once there, we discovered that there was a Kiosk that sold ice-creams and snacks, although we had been unaware of this so had taken our own, obviously not ice-creams though 🤭 there were also some very clean toilet and changing facilities, which we also had not known about. In this area of the river, no chairs, sunbeds etc. were permitted and the beach area was all stones and gravel, so we sat on our towels. The recommendation was to wear water shoes, due to the large underwater rocks and shingle river bed, we again were not aware of this beforehand or we would have brought the ones that had been laying dormant in our wardrobes at home for some time, but we managed to get by with our flip-flops, and we had seen other’s go in barefoot. Now this was not the ‘Thermal Spring’ that we had read about prior to coming here, the one were the water was a constant 25 degrees(c), no, that was, as we later discovered, in a purpose built building in the town 😲 and which we soon came to realise when we initially entered the water in the river 🥶 Actually, I am exaggerating for the water wasn’t actually that cold, although it did come as a bit of a shock when we were expecting to enter a warm bath 🤭

We ended our final evening, once again, at the very nice River Beach Club restaurant. We had only spent two and a half days here, 3 nights in the wonderful hotel, but we had done everything that we had come to do and we both agreed that this had in fact been the highlight of the trip so far. We had decided that we may as well keep heading Southwards, towards home, and so had picked our next destination, but more about that in my next ramble 😉

So, until then……………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena