A day of two halves
Oct. 31st, 2011 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThere were two monasteries, the old and the new, the lower and the higher (or, more accurately, the higher and the even higher). The walk, too, was in two parts, uphill and down, there and back again.
Our guide book recommended the walk from the old monastery of San Juan de la Peña to Santa Cruz; the information board by the church - and under the horse chestnut tree, which meant that consulting it we ran the risk of being brained by falling conkers, slipping ripe and heavy out of their shells and bouncing around our feet - showed a yellow loop, straight one way and winding back. The direct route was easy to find: a fingerpost pointed up the hill behind our hotel. The winding return was less obvious: did it simply follow the road down? In any case, I prefer steep ascents to steep descents (the uphill struggle may leave you breathless, but it's easier on the knees), so we set off up the slope, hoping that when we reached the top our return route would become obvious.
The sun was bright and warm, the path was steep and rocky, and we took our time. We stopped on the slightest excuse to admire the view back into the valley or across to the Pyrenees in the distance. There were plants to photograph: the crocus hiding under the shade of the boxwood, the rosettes which a helpful notice told us were Pyrenean saxifrage (which apparently only flowers once in its life, but when it does, it's spectacular). When we sat down for a drink of water, we were surrounded by the scent of the wild lavender and rosemary, Just as I was beginning to flag, we crossed a shoulder and left the scrubland to follow a smoother, broader path gently down through woodland from which we emerged to see the old monastery tucked into the rock face in front of us.
The monastery is surprise after surprise: it's larger than it looks, and more elaborate: you enter through the old crypt, and admire the simple elegance of the stone arches, but beyond the crypt is the mausoleum of the kings of Aragon, and beyond that the church - in which is displayed a replica of the Holy Grail once kept in the monastery but now in the cathedral in Valencia - and beyond that a cloister, its elegant columns with their beautifully carved capitals contrasting oddly with the overhanging rock, and beyond the cloister a flamboyant Gothic chapel...
There are some good pictures on this website, and some information, too, in quasi-English.
There's a shuttle bus up to the higher, newer monastery. The driver tackled the hairpin bends with aplomb, but we were convinced that the bus had been constructed to the strict measurements of the road: six inches longer, and surely it wouldn't have made it. But at the top we emerged onto a broad grassy plateau, in front of a massive building:
By now it was two o' clock, and the monastery had closed for lunchtime, but the wing to the left of the church was a huge and stylish modern building housing the shop, a café, cool and airy toilets with a fine view out to another visitor centre, exhibition space with a display of modern art (was this actually built over the old cloister? certainly it surrounded an open square space).
Refreshed, we waited for the monastery to reopen, then found ourselves in an equally huge and even more stylish interpretation centre, which totally failed to interpret what we were seeing. We walked on glass floors below which we could see ruined walls and occasionally sculpted figures in white reenacting the monastic life of the seventeenth century (I think). Conscious that we had a long walk home ahead of us, we decided we had seen enough of this museum, but would have a quick look at the church before we set off - yet the only door we could find led us into yet another range of semi-reconstructed excavations. Eventually, we gave up. Was there even a church behind that grandiose façade? Perhaps there was a living monastery to which we were not admitted?
We were baffled, too, in our search for a homeward route other than the road; doubly baffled, because it really was not a good road to be walking on, being a lethal combination of too narrow and too busy. There were sights to be seen - some fine views down into Santa Cruz, fir trees decorated with globes of mistletoe - but they were less and less able to distract us from the slow grind downhill on tarmac. Could we possibly have missed an alternative path? Should we have waited for the shop to open before we set off, and tried to buy a map? Were we about to have a 'd'uh!' moment, when we would realise what we had done wrong?
Two miles from our destination we thought that moment had arrived, when we looked down across the stream to our right and thought we saw a path, but it only led into a shady picnic area, where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler very kindly left me to rest while he went on ahead and fetched the car back to collect me - so we did, after all, get back to the shop before it closed, and discover that although they had a variety of maps, there was nothing that would have helped us.
All the photos of San Juan de la Peña
Our guide book recommended the walk from the old monastery of San Juan de la Peña to Santa Cruz; the information board by the church - and under the horse chestnut tree, which meant that consulting it we ran the risk of being brained by falling conkers, slipping ripe and heavy out of their shells and bouncing around our feet - showed a yellow loop, straight one way and winding back. The direct route was easy to find: a fingerpost pointed up the hill behind our hotel. The winding return was less obvious: did it simply follow the road down? In any case, I prefer steep ascents to steep descents (the uphill struggle may leave you breathless, but it's easier on the knees), so we set off up the slope, hoping that when we reached the top our return route would become obvious.
The sun was bright and warm, the path was steep and rocky, and we took our time. We stopped on the slightest excuse to admire the view back into the valley or across to the Pyrenees in the distance. There were plants to photograph: the crocus hiding under the shade of the boxwood, the rosettes which a helpful notice told us were Pyrenean saxifrage (which apparently only flowers once in its life, but when it does, it's spectacular). When we sat down for a drink of water, we were surrounded by the scent of the wild lavender and rosemary, Just as I was beginning to flag, we crossed a shoulder and left the scrubland to follow a smoother, broader path gently down through woodland from which we emerged to see the old monastery tucked into the rock face in front of us.
The monastery is surprise after surprise: it's larger than it looks, and more elaborate: you enter through the old crypt, and admire the simple elegance of the stone arches, but beyond the crypt is the mausoleum of the kings of Aragon, and beyond that the church - in which is displayed a replica of the Holy Grail once kept in the monastery but now in the cathedral in Valencia - and beyond that a cloister, its elegant columns with their beautifully carved capitals contrasting oddly with the overhanging rock, and beyond the cloister a flamboyant Gothic chapel...
There are some good pictures on this website, and some information, too, in quasi-English.
There's a shuttle bus up to the higher, newer monastery. The driver tackled the hairpin bends with aplomb, but we were convinced that the bus had been constructed to the strict measurements of the road: six inches longer, and surely it wouldn't have made it. But at the top we emerged onto a broad grassy plateau, in front of a massive building:
By now it was two o' clock, and the monastery had closed for lunchtime, but the wing to the left of the church was a huge and stylish modern building housing the shop, a café, cool and airy toilets with a fine view out to another visitor centre, exhibition space with a display of modern art (was this actually built over the old cloister? certainly it surrounded an open square space).
Refreshed, we waited for the monastery to reopen, then found ourselves in an equally huge and even more stylish interpretation centre, which totally failed to interpret what we were seeing. We walked on glass floors below which we could see ruined walls and occasionally sculpted figures in white reenacting the monastic life of the seventeenth century (I think). Conscious that we had a long walk home ahead of us, we decided we had seen enough of this museum, but would have a quick look at the church before we set off - yet the only door we could find led us into yet another range of semi-reconstructed excavations. Eventually, we gave up. Was there even a church behind that grandiose façade? Perhaps there was a living monastery to which we were not admitted?
We were baffled, too, in our search for a homeward route other than the road; doubly baffled, because it really was not a good road to be walking on, being a lethal combination of too narrow and too busy. There were sights to be seen - some fine views down into Santa Cruz, fir trees decorated with globes of mistletoe - but they were less and less able to distract us from the slow grind downhill on tarmac. Could we possibly have missed an alternative path? Should we have waited for the shop to open before we set off, and tried to buy a map? Were we about to have a 'd'uh!' moment, when we would realise what we had done wrong?
Two miles from our destination we thought that moment had arrived, when we looked down across the stream to our right and thought we saw a path, but it only led into a shady picnic area, where
durham_rambler very kindly left me to rest while he went on ahead and fetched the car back to collect me - so we did, after all, get back to the shop before it closed, and discover that although they had a variety of maps, there was nothing that would have helped us.All the photos of San Juan de la Peña
