Hairy

Today's destination, chosen from the leaflet I got from the tourist office in Aínsa in September, was a village called Yeba. We've been to nearly all the places on this leaflet now, at least those reasonably close by. This is only about 20 km away but Google, paper maps, and the GPS were strangely contradictory about how to get there. They also reckoned it was going to take close to an hour; well yes, some roads around here are pretty bad.

We trusted the paper map in the end. Since the leaflet had said pista forestal, I wasn't particularly surprised when we turned off the main road onto yet another unmetalled track. But 15 km of it, sigh. We are used to mountain roads, and I have total confidence in S's ability to negotiate them, but I have to say I found this one a bit hairy. It wasn't just the width, potholes, gradients, crumbling edges, lack of barriers, sheer drops ... more the number of rocks lying in the road having fallen from the cliffs above. Here's the highest point, where a sheer wall of rock had been dynamited to allow the road to pass through, sloping steeply down on the other side (and losing the decent surface too). We got out to look around but felt we had to speak quietly in case we dislodged anything from above with the vibrations of our voices.

On the other side we left the sun behind and dropped into a dark, dank forest. The track got worse and worse, but finally we made it to the village, where the road comes to a dead end. We were greeted by two glossy black cats who were delighted to see us and led us proudly to the 16th-century church. Said to be delightful, but we couldn't verify this as the gate into the churchyard was locked, grr. 

Despite its remoteness, many of the houses in the village have been recently renovated, and maybe half of them are for sale -- somewhat optimistically in some cases. What a place to live! We met a chap walking his dog who didn't seem to be a bit surprised to see us. And there were also many grazing cattle in the pastures around the village. But the whole narrow valley was in the shade, and it was getting chilly. Going for a walk was not an option as we definitely didn't want to find ourselves driving back in the dark!

So it was back in the car and back up the steep, gravelly slope. This kind of thing is never as bad on the return journey, because you know what to expect. Back through the gap, and we were back in wall-to-wall sunshine. We stopped in the village of Campol on the way down. This is much nearer civilisation, on the sunny side of the mountain, with glorious views over the valley, looking beautiful in the buttery afternoon light. Yet most of the village is in ruins. Here the cats who greeted us were tabbies -- a mother and her three beautiful youngsters. There is a single house that appears to be occupied. I can only guess that someone in Yeba has enchufe (influence) and pulled strings to get renovation grants.

So ten minutes in Yeba ended up occupying the entire afternoon -- we left at two and got back after five!