Let's Build a Fort(Youtube) - The Citadel at Sagunto-6th May 2016

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We have probably said this before but sometimes the best finds we have made for sightseeing in Spain have been the lesser advertised places and so it turned out for our visit to nearby Sagunto.

It was as quiet as we thought it might be in our isolated and unoccupied neighbourhood and we managed to over sleep again. Not that we are planning to go far today.

We decided to contact our hosts, who live in the township of Pucol, if we hadn’t heard from them by midday regarding the internet availability as we are already having withdrawal symptoms and we have only being without contact to the outside world for 12 hours!

After breakfast we took a stroll down to the beach and a walk along the promenade. All is ready for the summer influx of holidaymakers, the beach is groomed and the weeds on the promenade sprayed and have died off.

After 20 minutes walking to the end of the promenade we turned around and headed back to the apartment to ready ourselves for the short drive to Sagunto.

The view up the coast towards Sagunto wasn’t particularly pleasant on the eye with a lot of industrial stuff around the port.

However we were heading for the township that like Pucol is set back from the beach.

Above the town is the prime reason for us visiting.

The whole of the top of the hill above the town is dominated by the remains of a citadel built by the Celtiberians in the 5^th century BC.So this town was a bit different in that it wasn’t the Moors who had built the fortifications but the settlers from centuries before.

The town had been fought over many times having a very strategic prominence above the plain that stretches back past Valencia and a fair distance inland as well and of course had great views out to the sea to watch for the next invasion.

During the period of Roman rule it was the centre of a major battle against the Carthaginians under Hannibal who won the battle and killed nearly every person in the town and those who his army didn’t kill, committed suicide not to be tortured to death! Gruesome!

The Romans came back and retook the town in 214BC and were responsible for building a magnificent amphitheatre below the citadel, some of which is still visible today.

However, what is remarkable is the work done to rebuild the amphitheatre around what was left from the Roman days so that now there is a working theatre where live shows are performed.

Before we made the climb up to the citadel to enjoy the vistas we found a Bank in the main street so that we could try and change €100 notes we had which aren’t welcome when paying in petrol stations or supermarkets for purchases well less than the note value.

We should have got ourselves smaller denominations before we left home but forgot and now we are both through most of the small notes we were carrying.

The first place that we thought was a Bank wasn’t, well not in the traditional sense! The young woman we met inside said that although they were a Bank they did not have any notes/money in the place!

She directed us to Santander Bank across the road and we both got a €100 bill changed.

The main church in the town, St Marys, was closed so continued up the hill to where we entered the gateway to the citadel. Strangely there was a ticket office with two men inside but entry was free (great) yet we were still given tickets to show we had entered.

There was work going on to uncover remains from the Roman times and some reconstruction of the outer walls of the citadel. We are not sure if this reconstruction does anything for the authencity of the site as the materials they are using to rebuild the wall are a different colour to the weathered remains of what has survived the centuries.

The citadel was built on the several levels that made up the summit of the hilltop and while there was little left remaining of the buildings in the centre the outer walls are all pretty much intact.

As the Celtiberians had realised the views of the surrounding countryside and out to sea were uninterrupted and would have been a difficult place to storm. Hannibal had a destructive reputation and would have been determined to make this town part of Carthage.

We were ready for lunch and after taking a quick look as we came back down to the town in the area which had also been identified as ‘the Jewry’ during part of more recent history during the 16^th century when all of the Jews living there were expelled. Only the archway leading into the small area had anything that referred to history of the Jewish people who lived there.

Nearby though we found a cafe which advertised tapas and we took the opportunity to enjoy a tapas lunch for probably the last time on the BBA V3.

It was another tasty tapas lunch with plates of patatas, tomatos in olive oil and a rather expensive at €8 for the calamari. The pints of beer were as usual cold and refreshing.

We have enjoyed the numerous tapas lunches we have had passing time while we waited for the food to arrive by people watching and every day we have had a lunch of tapas has been different.

What would have finished off lunch just nicely was an ice cream. But we hadn’t taken into account that Sagunto was a traditional Spanish town where everything and we mean everything including every Heladeria we passed was closed for the afternoon siesta. So ice cream was off the menu.

Driving back to the apartment we called in at the petrol station in Pucol town where we had noticed a very low price for petrol.

Usually where petrol is cheaper than the big brands we have found it will be a card operated pump and although they have all seemed to have different methods of taking the card, entering pin and then dispensing the petrol we thought we were up to this one.

We should have noticed 2 other patrons seemingly having problem with the card reader and not being able to get it to work. And all this while a person inside a small building on the site just sat there.

So 3 customers including ourselves drove off without buying any petrol. We have seen the same price at Intermarche Supermarket station down the road so we will be back!

We got back to the apartment just in time for our host to arrive with 3 workmen to install the internet. We had thought it odd that it wasn’t just that the internet’ wasn’t working ‘when we had looked around the apartment for a modem and couldn’t find one.

Within an hour the internet was up and running and we were back in touch with the world.

Before dinner, with the sky mostly clear and no breeze at all, we took another walk along the promenade but this time in the other direction south.

This time there were now a few more people around and we guess they must be people who had come home from work and were doing the same as us before dinner. There were even 3 people in the sea taking a dip, not that they lasted long. The sea was calm enough but it must still be a bit chilly with the air temperatures still only hovering around 20C.

Tomorrow it’s on towards Barcelona and we have another camping ground mobile home just for one night.

PS struggling for a song title today so have opted for one our grandsons will love to watch from Youtube.

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