It was raining as we first stirred this morning, started to brighten with chunks of blue sky at breakfast and as we left the campsite, the mist dropped down again and obliterated any forthcoming views.
It had rained quite a bit. The whole campsite is just sand with stony areas, so it just turned into sandy mud that clung onto everything. The Pup was not impressed having her feet wiped after every time she went out as we tried to keep the interior of the Van clean.
We headed off cross country, through olive groves and patchy ploughed fields that were full of stones and small rocks. We picked up the A-22 dual carriageway towards Huesca, running parallel with the Pyrenees, poking the odd peak through the clouds that obscured them. The A-22 was a relatively new road with sparkling new central barriers and smooth tarmac. As we neared Huesca, the cloud finally loosened its grip and allowing the far reaching views that had been missing these last two days to return, thought they still lurked, low and moody in the background.
As we skirted Huesca, a big looking city, the sun finally took charge and we crossed the huge arid plain between Huesca and Zaragoza under blue skies. It was a big jump today to the mountainous south western region of Aragon. We picked up the A-23 as we drove south across the flatlands – even with these big roads we were looking at nearly three hours of driving, but it would give the Van a good blast after many slow days of crawling through the Pyrenees.
We skimmed the eastern flank of Zaragoza, another vast sprawling city and peeled off to head south again, staying on the A-23. As we neared the mountains, the cloud began to gather again and blot out the sun. Here, the landscape was a sparse and desert like, dusty, treeless and bleached yellow. The towns seemed full of industry, surrounded by semi arid hills and stumpy trees. This reminded us of the old Western films and half expected to see Clint Eastwood pop out from behind a bush, with a cigar hanging limply, looking moody with a grubby poncho and a Colt 45 in its holster – we played the Magnificient Seven music just to complete the mood as we drove through this strange, but fascinating landscape.
I have a habit as we’re driving along to make notes in a notebook of what I see, so I can write them up for the blog later that day. Like the weather, the scenery was constantly changing and I struggled to keep up. The barren plateau started to change into more green, with valleys below us with tall poplar trees and little clustered communities surrounded by greenery on small hillsides, their tall bell towers in their village centres poking the sky. Then it become more arable and we were in wine country, with vineyards and distilleries as the mountains started to loom up. Around the corner and it changed again to wooded hillsides and then to craggy cliffs and bare hills. The towns and villages looked abandoned, the buildings with their render dropping off, looking grubby, dusty and unloved with nobody about, as if waiting for Lee Van Cleef to come into town and clear the tumbleweed streets of hidden bandits. The Magnificent Seven soundtrack played in our heads again, but looking closer, the windows were clean, balconies had flowers and you could imagine the insides being spotless. We continued through valleys, dropping down and then up, negotiating bends, passing rocky scrublands, the soil turning a reddy brown. This was amazing and I gave up writing notes and just admired instead. The sun would bob out from behind the clouds and make it all look beautiful – we passed some quite sparse areas, but they had a beauty in their own right and we soaked up all the scenery. It seemed that the long hot summer of 2026 had left its mark on this unusual, but interesting landscape and we liked it a lot.
We finally came up to Nuevalos, a small little town and drove 800 metres beyond to our new campsite, Camping Lago overlooking the huge Embalse de la Tranquera reservoir. We could go and chose our pitch and after some consideration parked sideways on one of the terraces that made up the campsite. Again, it was gravelly site, with hardly any grass, but it was better than yesterday with less dusty sand and more stone. We made a cuppa and relaxed before deciding to walk into town – we had to walk down the main road, which if it had six cars pass while we walked the 600 metres, that constituted a rush hour. Once in town, we turned right into what we thought would be a little bustling high street, but turned out to be a bit disappointing. There was a tiny little square with two little “supermarkets”, a chemist and a bar which was closed and nobody about. We started to walk up the road, but lost all motivation and decided to go back to the Van – we stopped at the supermarket to pick up some bits and waddled up the road. The town nestled under a fabulous outcrop of rock, that towered over us, the different layers of sediment showing – it was quite spectacular.
We got back to the Van and sat outside for a while until the temperature dropped and we headed inside and made something to eat. Then we got our books out and chilled until bedtime.
