Peniscola and Morella

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. 😄