About halfway through our trip, we stayed three nights in L’Albir, which is at the other end of the bay from busier Altea. Altea however has a very pretty old town and I have lots of photos from that visit, which I’ll sort out when home. So for now, I’ll take you along this 5km there and back walk to the lighthouse of Albir, which looks back over the whole bay area.
The path was fantastic, nice flat even concrete so you can walk along admiring the scenery without having to watch for rocks or roots which invariably trip me if I’m not careful on most walks! The downside was that it was part cloudy and very hazy the morning that we walked here. It seemed very humid in L’Albir, so we wanted to get our exercise out of the way in the cooler morning! It did clear a bit along the way, so we were hugging the shady side on the way back.
Altea zoomed in above, and K at the beginning of the walk with L’Albir in the background below.
Below, Mediterranean Heather (pink flowers) and Rosemary flowering everywhere on the rocky garrigue.
(A side note: I don’t know what’s going on here but since all the insects in my first post there have been very few, and south of Valencia I have barely seen a bee or hoverfly on all these flowers (between the native plants and the foreign species in bloom in people's gardens/campsites) - only a few wasps, flies and mossies. Crickets have been making their summery noise at night when we pass wasteland on the way to a restaurant but apart from that, and a few Red Admirals and White butterflies, virtually nothing! OK, it’s late October, but it’s about 28C during the day and mild at night. It’s just very weird - and disappointing!)
You can just see the lighthouse at the top middle of the photo below. If you click to view larger, it will be clearer.
There used to be an ochre mine here in the 19thC through to early 20thC. Info is given in English in the following photo on the info board (click to view larger if you can’t read it).
There was a good photographic display about the families who worked at the lighthouse, which was difficult to access back in the olden days. Two families would live in this building, with the two lighthouse keepers.
You can see the path running left to right through the middle section of the photo.
Lavandula dentata, which PlantNet calls French Lavender; however I always thought that was the Papillon Lavender, which is L. stoechas. I haven’t seen this species of Lavender growing wild before.
We are enjoying our last week and started heading back north today, first stop the Ebro Delta for a couple of nights and some birding around the lagoons and rice paddies. 😄
This desert-like area was just over the border into Murcia, which I read somewhere was the, or one of the, most arid parts of Spain. We had already been driving through fields of different kinds of produce - from most of Valencia’s oranges, rice and olives to orchards of pomegranates and fields of date palms. I’m now feeling inquisitive as to what they might grow in the very south of Spain! Strangely enough, around Valencia there have been many fields of globe artichokes, a crop very common around Roscoff in Brittany. And even stranger indeed, fields galore of cabbages. I’m amazed they would grow through the heat of Spain’s summer, even though of course they are irrigated.
Here however, there was nothing. Nada. Oh ok, a few olives here and there. 😄
All photos are SOOC again, and the sky was hazy, but you can see from the pic of Keith and his bright shirt that the landscape colours really were that pale colour. Those were mostly rocks rather than soil where they are completely devoid of vegetation. I love these weird kind of landscapes!
Looking in the other direction it’s a little greener with an olive grove in the middle of the wild landscape.
I don’t know what this plant is below - it’s a rush-like plant (I’ll PlantNet it when I get home as it’s fascinating) and it’s so amazing to see signs of life even on seemingly half dead things. I’m not sure if these tiny pretty peach flowers are actual flowers, or bracts.
Other life? I saw my first real, through binoculars, Dartford Warbler! 💕 We think we’ve seen them before when we didn’t have binocs, because of the way they hold their long tails, like a wren. Even this time the bird was backlit so couldn’t see all the details and colours, but I’ll take that as a tick!
Here are a couple of pics of me at Morella; they were on K’s phone so I didn’t have them at the time of doing the last post. The burger is a very weird deconstructed one at a quite posh restaurant, delicious, but give me a regular burger any day! 😄
I’m sorry I haven’t visited any of your blogs, my evenings are busy downloading photos and checking out places to park and that kind of thing for the next day and more Facebooking than usual due to posting a few photos there. Be back soon!
Hi guys, day 9, I think, of our Spanish adventure. Thanks so much to those of you who commented on my last post - sorry, have not as yet got round to stealing K’s laptop in order to reply! Last night I had no internet connection on my iPad and K had a very occasional weak one through his laptop (the phone had lost any signal on our second day at that campsite, very strange as it was fine the day before). So I spent my time playing around with some of my photos on Snapseed.
I’m going to leave the bird posts until we come back, as most will be better after an edit on a big screen, but I do want to share this one. We were at a small reserve/lagoon yesterday just south of Valencia, in a hide with a lot of wader and duck activity, when a Kingfisher landed on a tree next to me. No one else in the hide noticed so I snapped away happily, but I was rather disappointed with the results because (1) I was shooting through glass and (2) the bird was very backlit so I had to really underexpose to get any details. But with a Snapseed filter and a bit of extra editing, I have brought up some of the colours. I actually got some more photos of one in the sun, but just as I was zooming in, it flew off!
Do click on the image to view larger as you will probably see many more details than on the smaller photos in amongst the text.
Back to our trip - we spent four nights in Peniscola, which is just south of the Ebro Delta, in the Valencia province. The campsite we had planned to stay at was full! That’s a first for us. They directed us to another site, a bit closer into the town but quite a tight squeeze and not the nicest of pitches, as it had been very wet, and did rain again one night. But we’ve had lovely weather every day.
The day we had a wander around the town, we had lunch opposite the castle, which appeared to close whilst we were sitting there, so we never visited, as we had other things planned for the other days. To be honest, we were so stuffed after a fantastic tapas lunch with the freshest fish and squid I’ve ever had fried like that, that we were both rather pleased we did not have to climb up and down stairs to visit the castle!
The old town up on the hill is lovely, very Greek with white buildings and lots of Greek blue shutters and windows etc. Here’s me in front of one of the gates into the old town.
Many of the balconies have pretty tiles on the underside - what a brilliant idea!
The church next to the castle.
A part of the castle - we weren’t anywhere where we could get a good shot of the whole of it!
I love the decoration on the buildings - they all have the same size very narrow balconies, only big enough for plants, but some people really go to town and many have these tall narrow cacti on them, or varied cacti on the ground like here!
Keith given a Snapseed filter - he took a shot of me here but I had my eyes closed! 🙄😄
Looking back over the new town from the old town.
One day we visited the small town of Morella, about an hour inland. Again, it has a castle up on the top of a hill with the town below it. This castle was higher up so I never had any plans to walk up to it (I’m saving my energy for walking on the birding days) and K was in complete agreement! It’s also quite difficult if you want to eat out for lunch to then go doing that kind of exercise!
I didn’t get to editing any of these, so they are just SOOC, as they say, Straight Out Of Camera. I also have not given you any historical info, it’s all too much on the iPad so there’s a link to Wikipedia above about this town.
Views from the town over the countryside, and from the town to the castle.
It was really arid here inland, yet so green by the coast!
Birding has been hit and miss with some places abundant with wildlife, and others with very little birdlife, although always there are dragonflies (mostly Red-veined Darters) and I’ve seen a good butterfly, a Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus)!
That’s it for now, off birding again tomorrow then we start our slow journey back, stopping at more coastal places for a mix of old towns and nature. 😄
Hola from Espana! We are away for a three week trip in Mary Moho, starting off at our favourite bird reserve just south of Roses and close to the French border. It’s not the best time of year for birding, having missed the migration season and it seems, being before all the overwintering ducks come in, but we still enjoyed two days full of birds, butterflies and dragonflies!
Ok, I’m not going to type lots as I’m on my iPad, so here are some photos, some cropped but none edited apart from a couple with some instant filters. Much easier than faffing around in Lightroom! 😂😂😂
Flamingos above and Little Grebe below.
This creature took some Googling as I didn’t bring an insect book (only my butterfly book), but I got there in the end. Believe it or not, it’s a grasshopper! It’s a Common Cone-headed Grasshopper, though I’m not sure how common it is! I know it’s head makes no sense, but it’s mouthparts are well below the eyes - look just above the first leg and you will see it, then the head shape starts looking more like a grasshopper, rather than an alien!
There were a lot of yellow flowers (don’t know name of plant) which was attracting a lot of butterflies. Clouded Yellows were one of them.
This butterfly was confusing me as it looked something like a Marbled White whilst flying, yet more like one of the Cabbage Whites with its wings open. My butterfly book came to the rescue, and I am pretty sure it is a Bath White, which is a lifer for me!
(By the way, I am not posting the Latin names this time as it’s just an additional hassle on my iPad.)
The red dragonfly, I think, is a Red-veined Darter, yet the one above was flying everywhere with it (by it, I mean loads of them). They have the same pterostigma markings, yet the one above is nothing like a female Red-veined (or any other red darter which I googled), so I have no idea what is is!
I don’t know the species, no time for googling frogs as well as insects! 😄
It had rained a lot recently here after a very hot dry summer, so water had been available to pump into the lagoon, which sometimes dries out in summer, and is used for animal grazing.
An Egyptian Goose, with female behind it, given a filter as it was in heavy shade.
A turtle of some sort, I’ll be IDing when I get home!
This is a Camargue horse, which graze all over wetland areas like this, as they are perfectly at home in wet meadows.
Phew, I think that’s enough, on an iPad this blogging is a real pain in the rear! Today we have arrived in Peniscola, in the top end of the province of Valencia. It is very wet here and has rained since we arrived! The forecast is due to change and be about 28c though, so looking forward to that. I’ll be back in a few more days when I have some more to share, though I will have to use K’s laptop to reply to comments.
