Sunday, March 13, 2011

Went walking today...

Went off to the Massif de la Garraf.  We had a super lovely day.  Sunshine, not too hot, not too cold.  I was walking most of the day in a tank top, though most folks had more on. Showing my Canadian roots.  

We started here, at a hermitage near the town of Gavà.  


We walked up hill from there, and saw this arch.  
Water erosion,  powerful stuff.


This is the site of the original hermitage, a shepherd found a madonna in that cave, brought it down to the town and found that all he had left was a hand when he got there.  He went back up looking for her, and found her back in the cave, missing a hand.  SO they decide she wanted to stay and made it official-ish.  Later she decided she was willing to move down to the hermitage first shown, when they had more money to build it for her.  



Further up the hill, indeed nearly as high as you can get is a castle.  Dates from the 900s some time, and there are Iberic ruins in the area that predate the romans.  They lived in the hills, the plains were unhealthy, mostly from waterborne disease and malaria, they think.

The castle was cool, this is the church that was up there.  


If you look at the picture above, we walked basically all the way right then up over top of the white spiky bits of mountains above the church, then over to the peak on the left and then down out of the picture further left.  Lovely day.
A medieval tomb.  They were skinny and short.


View from the top of the second peak.


Hope you had a good one.

I even scored a nap lying in the grass in the sunshine after lunch!

Then when I got home, we went into the mountains again with the dog.  Rain again tomorrow, but we have HEAT!!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks beautiful. I'm envious. I took Peggy to the ballet which was very good
Seadog

Helen said...

Great photos - how do you get Blogger to cooperate so well?

Anonymous said...

great pictures! Nice to see that the "picture walks" season is starting again around there :)

thecatalanway said...

Ooooh lovely! It's so good to get out into the hills and in the sunshine too. You've reminded me why I want to come back. Enjoy enjoy enjoy the warmth!
Two dogs here looking forward to coming over and lying in the sun instead of the rain. Just need to find that house with a garden now!
Kate x

oreneta said...

Seadog, glad the ballet was good....come visit soon!!!!!

Blogger. Oh Helen, some days yes, some days no. Needs lots of patience with the pictures these days, very very slow loading.

ElP, glad you like it!

Kate, the wamth is wonderful. Sounds like a good motivator for some house hunting. Rents are low now in Spain generally!