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The stolen lake
Dec. 23rd, 2011 10:43 pmIt's a dark wet day, and I'm thankful to have rain where in the last two years we've had snow. Thankful, too, to have photographs which bring back memories of hot sunshine and the end of a long dry summer in Spain.
For the last time, we left Santa Cruz and drove back along the valley that runs parallel to the mountains; once again we passed the reservoir of Yesa, and once again we were amazed at the extraordinary blueness of the water, and how little of it there was: had we arrived in the middle of a drought? was the reservoir newly completed and not yet full? Neither hypothesis was completely convincing.
We were doubling back to visit the monastery of Leyre, at the instigation of Edwin Mullins, whose The Pilgrimage to Santiago has accompanied us along the pilgrim route through France and into Spain. We were less impressed than our guide by the monastery: nice portal, we thought, but a merely OK church. The crypt, however, was wonderful, and we were glad we'd come. (There will be photographs in due course).
As we were leaving, we picked up another piece of information for our jigsaw puzzle: an information board enthused about the beautiful setting of the monastery, with its view over the "tranquil waters" of the lake. So it had at some point been full of water. (We eventually discovered what should probably have been obvious, that the reservoir is filled in the wet months and then emptied through the summer to irrigate the fields; we had simply arrived after a summer which was drier than most).
The Lonely Planet guide suggested a scenic route to Sos del Rey Católico, where we had booked a room for the night in the pasrador: we crossed the reservoir and drove across a rock-strewn landscape to "the gorgeous abandoned village of Ruesta".
It's all of that, and more. Built as a fortress by the Moors, a staging point on the Camino Aragones, abandoned in the 1950s, handed over by the water company to the Confederación del Trabajo de Aragón in 1988 as part of their policy of rehabilitating settlements abandoned when reservoirs were constructed. (There's a web site, in Spanish.) From the road, all you see are the towers of the fortress perched on a ridge, emerging from a tangle of greenery. We pulled in to the square, and plunged into the tiny labyrinth of alleyways, dotted with clues that the place was being reclaimed: a vase placed in a niche in the semi-derelict wall, a cafe backing onto an open courtyard roofed with creepers, where the menu consisted entirely of variants on ham, egg and chips, and a constant flow of pilgrims appeared from what looked like a sheer drop beyond the wall.
After this, Sos del Rey was rather an anticlimax.
(All the pictures of the Monasterio de Leyre; all the pictures of Ruesta).
For the last time, we left Santa Cruz and drove back along the valley that runs parallel to the mountains; once again we passed the reservoir of Yesa, and once again we were amazed at the extraordinary blueness of the water, and how little of it there was: had we arrived in the middle of a drought? was the reservoir newly completed and not yet full? Neither hypothesis was completely convincing.
We were doubling back to visit the monastery of Leyre, at the instigation of Edwin Mullins, whose The Pilgrimage to Santiago has accompanied us along the pilgrim route through France and into Spain. We were less impressed than our guide by the monastery: nice portal, we thought, but a merely OK church. The crypt, however, was wonderful, and we were glad we'd come. (There will be photographs in due course).
As we were leaving, we picked up another piece of information for our jigsaw puzzle: an information board enthused about the beautiful setting of the monastery, with its view over the "tranquil waters" of the lake. So it had at some point been full of water. (We eventually discovered what should probably have been obvious, that the reservoir is filled in the wet months and then emptied through the summer to irrigate the fields; we had simply arrived after a summer which was drier than most).
The Lonely Planet guide suggested a scenic route to Sos del Rey Católico, where we had booked a room for the night in the pasrador: we crossed the reservoir and drove across a rock-strewn landscape to "the gorgeous abandoned village of Ruesta".
It's all of that, and more. Built as a fortress by the Moors, a staging point on the Camino Aragones, abandoned in the 1950s, handed over by the water company to the Confederación del Trabajo de Aragón in 1988 as part of their policy of rehabilitating settlements abandoned when reservoirs were constructed. (There's a web site, in Spanish.) From the road, all you see are the towers of the fortress perched on a ridge, emerging from a tangle of greenery. We pulled in to the square, and plunged into the tiny labyrinth of alleyways, dotted with clues that the place was being reclaimed: a vase placed in a niche in the semi-derelict wall, a cafe backing onto an open courtyard roofed with creepers, where the menu consisted entirely of variants on ham, egg and chips, and a constant flow of pilgrims appeared from what looked like a sheer drop beyond the wall.
After this, Sos del Rey was rather an anticlimax.
(All the pictures of the Monasterio de Leyre; all the pictures of Ruesta).
