La Ronda de Boltaña

A hot, crowded day today. We set off after breakfast to the Canyon of Añisclo, which is reached along a slightly scary road balanced halfway up a cliff. It's so narrow and twisty that it's one way until you get to a point where you can return along another one-way road. We got to the halfway point at about 11 o'clock and there were already dozens of parked cars. The downside of going to places in the high season, which we don't normally do.

We had an hour's walk around the canyon, visiting an old hermitage, the ruins of a mill, and the river itself. It was a pleasant place to be as it was largely in the shade of cliffs, beech woods, or both. Returning along the other road, we had to stop to admire this stupendous view. The landscape in Aragon is quite different from that in the Basque Country, much more dramatic.

Back in Aínsa, we headed for the swankiest restaurant in town, solely because I had identified it as the one featured in Dolores Redondo's Legado en los Huesos -- in fact Redondo is the reason we are in Ainsa. We chose the cheaper of the two menus and had a ludicrously entertaining meal in which each course was more absurd than the next. I haven't time to describe it all but it included such things as a mini hamburger balanced on a crushed beer can, a lump of earth with lettuce growing in it, and clouds of icy nitrogen billowing from bowls. The meal was very much style over substance, but it was fun, relatively cheap for this type of restaurant, and it occupied the whole afternoon.

We only had time for a brief siesta before heading out again, on S's insistence to see La Ronda de Boltaña, a local band whose speciality is that they don't get paid. They go round people's houses playing music and are given food and drink in exchange. A bit like wassailing, except not only at Christmas.

In this small village a crowd of about 200 people followed them from house to house, and the householders fed all the camp followers too, with tapas and copious amounts of sangria. If we hadn't had such a large lunch we could have eaten our fill. The music was fun, and the houses and gardens were beautiful too. After a couple of hours they were still going strong, buy we weren't, so we returned to the campsite.

But I have run out of time; another appointment awaits. So I'll tell you more about the Ronda tomorrow.