Day 15 – to the pass above El Tobar (& Beteta)

I spent a very pleasant hour or so in Beteta’s Plaza de Iglesia with coffee as most of the village kept sleeping. I was just about to leave when a bikepacker arrived, and as ever I need to know where he was headed, so approached with some basic Spanish. He was Ross, a bike mechanic from Hackney Wick, riding the MontañasVacías route. The same which I had researched for years now, and am driving around. The link to the route is here.. https://montanasvacias.com/route/

By the time we parted it was midday, and I settled for a walk around the lagoon at El Tobar, draped by spectacular peaks.

Route

Though it’s pretty high up here, at 1100 metres, it’s sat in a sort of bowl, and doesn’t get much wind, which helps the flies not to linger.

So we headed up the pass on the small road over to Poyatos, and parked up at the pass at 1350 metres. This is rather a quirk, in that the road isn’t on google maps; one reason for the lack of traffic perhaps. The other being that this area really is part of these ‘Empty Mountains’. Not one car passed.

Across the valley, and high up on the opposite side is the village of Lagunaseca, and for them, it was clearly some sort of celebratory Sunday. The lights of its cluster of houses stood out against an otherwise pitch black sky, until at midnight, 15 minutes of fireworks lit up the sky. We were in bed, and I am not a lover of fireworks at all, but it was worth getting up for, and I guess at a mile or so away, it didn’t bother the dog either.