Days 18-21

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Days 18-21: Miravet and Riu Ebre

A large slice of our first day here was consumed with a viewing of the nuptials of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Helen having undergone her one-day transformation from republican to royalist that takes hold every few years. Our four days thereafter at and around Miravet are described here in a single entry, as time has – if not stood still – at least seemed less linear in its progress. So rather than a chronological order of our activities (and inactivities), this is a more thematic treatment.

To continue yesterday’s description of our physical location: Miravet village is located on the outer bank of a right-angle bend in the Ebro river, part of it on the river flat and the rest clinging to various angles of hillside and cliff face that lead upward to an eleventh-century castle. That building dominates the immediate landscape, and is in remarkably good condition for its age. The site is clearly of enormous strategic value for the various military purposes that have arisen over the centuries, so that the construction of such a substantial building (in several stages over five centuries) will have been well justified – even to the untrained eye it looks to have been near-impregnable to conventional arms. The importance of the village is illustrated a few metres from our front door, where bullet-marks from the Civil War are visible around the door of a church. That building, which began life as a mosque in Muslim times, is no longer in use, a “modern” (mid-twentieth-century) church being down on the flat in the village centre. Presumably the more aged worshippers down there are grateful not to be making the climb up the hill. Its only purpose now appears to be to house a pair of kestrels, a bird new to us. Smaller and more agile in the air than our goshawk varieties, they seemed to co-exist comfortably with the swallows that arced around the building tweeting at real or imagined threats to their young.

On the language front, it might be thought a good thing that most of the locals are bilingual. Sadly, neither of those languages is English: this is a strongly Catalan region, and that is the first language of most people, Spanish being the second. Catalan appears to be a version of Spanish with some French influences, in which most words vary from the Spanish in spelling or pronunciation or both, and many others are peculiar to the local tongue. An expatriate Englishwoman we spoke to explained that this had made it extremely difficult for her to learn to communicate, in that she was frequently unsure what language a new word belonged to, and she herself had acquired a sort of hybrid. Surprisingly many locals have little or no English at all, even in tourism-friendly enterprises where they might have been expected to acquire some working vocabulary. As in France, though, people are mostly friendly and helpful if you make the effort to use their language – although in our case that was some very basic Spanish and no Catalan.

We discovered a little about Catalan food and wine at restaurants, notably Moli de Xim and L’Embarcador, in Miravet and nearby villages. All were cheap by Australian standards, at around $12-$22 for main courses. We did have to become accustomed to the local timings, whereby it’s hard to get a lunch reservation before 1.15 or dinner before 8.30. Particularly memorable over several meals were a white asparagus entrée, a kind of cannelloni with shredded meat in a cheese sauce, an unbelievably tender thick rump steak, a perfectly grilled salmon and thyme-flavoured ice-cream; but they were simply the best from meals that rarely disappointed. The region is largely concerned with red wine, but we had a couple of striking rosés along the way. Few farm animals are visible – the district specializes in stone fruit, olives and grapes. There is a thriving local pottery industry, but unfortunately its produce is a bit bulky to take with us, and no-one seems to have organized a mail-it-anywhere facility.

About five kilometres upstream is a car ferry, apparently the only one of its kind left in the country. It is powered solely by the force of the river’s current – which is visibly strong – harnessed by a system of ropes and the rudders of the two boats which, lashed together and joined by a platform, constitute the ferry. As each car drives off, the ferry deck bobs up and down by about eight inches. We watched and photographed a crossing but didn’t embark.

The castle has been well preserved and researched, and offers the intrepid climber an incredibly claustrophobic spiral ascent to the top of its tower that makes the Aireys Inlet lighthouse staircase look like the one in Gone With The Wind. The views, to those who venture near the edge, are breathtaking from up there, and the scale of the castle itself is only apparent when it’s viewed in its relationship to the village as a whole from a kilometre or two away.

It is incredible (and lucky for us) that such a place has been so lightly touched by tourism. The local people seem not to be energetic about changing that situation.

- Andrew

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