Mas de Noguera-Montanejos

Neither of us slept so well last night. It was windy and a banging gate somewhere kept disturbing our rest. 

When we reluctantly got out of bed and made our way over to the dining room we realised how cold it had become overnight. 

Breakfast was good - enough coffee to keep us awake for several days, bread and jam, cereals with yoghourt and honey, and as many sausages left over from the previous evening’s meal as we wanted. 

Breakfast over, we started off, dressed in as many clothes as we had to keep out the piercing wind. It was marvellous to ascend through green pine trees and wild flowers, such a contrast to the depressing sight of blackened trunks and charred piles of wood. 

It was a steep climb up to the ridge of the Sierra Espina then down the other side:

With a tremendous view of mountain ranges into the distance. I can’t quite remember what happened after that - we followed the route but it seemed to be different on the ground than the map so an amount of road walking happened that we hadn’t anticipated.

We stopped for lunch at a woodcutter’s shed. Four chairs and a table plus assorted tools and interesting rubbish:

Informative signs before Montanejos

But the final part of the route to Montanejos was spectacular- a vertiginous path underneath a massive vertical limestone cliff with views down to the riverbed hundreds of metres below. 

A steep path led us down to Montanejos, where we had a great meal in bar Sede - salad, anchovies and pimientos de padron, lamb chops and salmon. Really good food and a cut above what we’ve had so far.