Cambrils fishing village/ roman Quarry

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Thursday 21.1.2010 day 99
Cambrils fishing village/ roman Quarry
Today we are having tapas and drinking sangria on the water front promanade at this ‘traditional Spanish fishing village’ (well maybe it was 30 years ago!) on a warm sunny day. Very pleasant - what a hard life.
We also decided to checkout the 2200 year old Roman Quarry where the Romans (what did they ever do for us?) dug out the stone for the old city of Tarragona. Unlike many other ancient sites in Spain, this one was sign posted like an English Neolithic site (ie nothing helpful). After 500 metres we got to the aqua duct which was under scaffolding and being repaired, and blocking the path to the Roman quarry. Only then did the sign say ‘Closed for repairs 2009 to 2011, sorry for the inconvenience’. In an attempt to find the quarry we walked several kilometres and saw another site where stone was extracted, a monument by the French of their victory over a local estate in 1811 vandalised by pro-Spanish anti-French graffiti and the old ruins of the estate house and gardens.....we never found the site we went to see. The site we wanted to see was a deep quarry where, ever with an eye on posterity, the Romans had thoughtfully left a 16 metre high column of stone to show the depth to which they had excavated the rock to. Luckily we had seen the photos in the tourist brochure. Viva Espana! (as graffiti on the French monument said).

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