26/11/18 – 27/11/18
We left Castellon to head inland to get bit of variety. Our initial destination was Sagunto. I wanted to visit Sagunto castle, the remains of a Roman fortress topped with Moorish and medieval defences. It’s highly visible from the road as you journey south perched on the top of a hill with the modern town around it’s base.
With no motorhome parking in the modern city we initially tried to find a parking spot at the railway station, but it was far too busy to squeeze us in. We drove around for a bit in a search of some parking but didn’t turn up anything we were happy with. In frustration we popped to Lidl, did a bit of shopping and looked on the map. It was then I remembered that it was Monday and like many tourist attractions the castle is closed on a Monday. Although we could have walked around the outside of the castle by this point we just decided to give it a miss. Maybe we could come back another day.
Onwards we travelled to our next planned spot. Segorbe. The motorhome parking here was on the edge of the road with a service point and multiple motorhome parking spots. The railway line runs parallel to the road but the trains were infrequent and didn’t disturb us overnight. There is a sign that indicates overnight parking is not allowed, but it seems to be ignored. We weren’t the only people here and the police drove past several times.
We spent the remains of the afternoon wandering around the town that rises on the hill behind the parking area. There is enough here to for an interesting stroll, the old city walls and their towers, remains of a medieval castle and more modern buildings. An interesting cathedral and, as you might expect, many churches.
The following morning we set out on a walk around the Pallencia river. Our aim was to reach the Salto de la Novia, an impressive waterfall. We set off from our parking spot around the eastern side of the bulge of Segorbe, taking tracks through orchards of oranges and persimmons to bring us to the Pallencia at the ‘Fuente de los 50 Canos’. Each spout of this fountain has the crest of a different province of Spain.
From here we followed the side of the river for a short while before heading up, past a tennis centre onto a ridge of red rock. Following a well worn trail through scrubby Aleppo pine and holm oak that eventually dropped down and bought us to the waterfall below an elaborately eroded cliff.
At the waterfall there was a large group of students and we were shocked to hear so many people speaking English. The exchange group were making their way along the river but moving very slowly in the way of large groups of teenagers.
We continued on up the river where there was another waterfall, accessed by some steps but barely a trickle. There were a couple more water fountains along the way and goats climbed the rocks on the other side of the river.
After a while we turned around and made our way back, past the waterfall where the students seemed to have made little progress and were still gathered in clumps. Instead of climbing back up onto the ridge we bore right and continued to follow the river for a while, finding evidence of previous man made water courses and aqueducts – now dry and collapsed.
When the path headed away from the river and up to a track we left it and followed a modern irrigation channel. This was full of water and bordered by bamboo but we managed a balancing act along the concrete edge to short cut through olive groves back to our original path. We headed back down to the 50 spouts and to vary the return route a little we wandered through the narrow streets of the town.
It was time to move onto Valencia!