Ansó, 26 February
by Isabel Isherwood - 22:38 on 28 February 2017
Jake had a to leave again today after just under a fortnight at home - this time for Brazzaville and then Cameroon. We took him to Huesca for the 4pm bus, and decided to make a detour via the Castillo de Loarre. Even without visiting a rather magnificent 1200 year old castle, the journey to Huesca is very fine, passing through the gorge of the Rio Gallego and then skirting the base of the imposing conglomerate towers of the Mallos de Riglos. Today the journey was even better: as we emerged from the gorge to the plain at Riglos, we found ourselves surrounded by orchards dense with white and pink blossom, and the air heavy with their perfume.
Of course we've driven this way a number of times before, but the trees have been bare - evidently orchards or plantations of some kind, but we had never really given them much thought. Now it is clear that they are almond and cherry orchards; literally miles and miles of them. Some contrasting gloriously with the bare tilled red earth, others surrounded by vegetation, some itself in flower - seas of white or yellow with the flower-laden trees rising above.
The Castillo de Loarre was as beautiful and impressive as we'd been led to expect, with some particularly lovely carvings including one which tickled me of an evidently rather stressed man trying to wrestle his skirts out of the grip of two lions (or a lion and a wolf? Or some other large skirt-pinching carnivore....?). But the enduring memory of the day for me will be the completely unexpected glory of the orchards in bloom.
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