Today was a sad day for people in this region. It was the one year anniversary of what the locals know as the DANA floods in Spain in which 229 of the 234 deaths reported, were in the Valencia province. There would be a minute of silence planned for midday, but we were unsure where we'd be at that time.
After a late start the last couple of days, today we were up at 07:10 for breakfast to be on the road an hour later. We headed to the bus stop first, but the bus we wanted was full and not accepting passengers, so we headed to Xàtiva metro station instead. We couldn't risk being late, as we needed to be at the Mestella Football Stadium for 09:00 to be picked up for a tour of Peñíscola by a company called Batwalking.
We took the metro to the stadium, and as we arrived, so did a mini bus bearing the name 'Batwalking'. We checked in for the tour, and one by one more people turned up for this tour, and other tours. Whilst we stood around I noticed the logo of Valencia CF was a bat, and finally I understood the name of the company providing the tour. Digging deeper into this afterwards, I found that it's not just the football club that uses the bat, but it's also a symbol of the city due to the legend that a bat woke King James I up, and in doing so he was able to fend off an attack from the Moors.
Miguel was our tour guide for this trip as we joined him and six others in one of the mini buses.
Early on in the drive out of the city we passed field after field of orange trees. It’s the main agriculture in Valencia, but rather than eat their own produce, the majority is sold to other European countries as the farmers get more money from there. Instead, they buy their own from Morocco as they’re cheaper, albeit requiring transportation and packaging that adds to waste and pollution in the world. We'd seen oranges growing in the streets of Valencia in abundance, but apparently these ones are very bitter.
Other than orange trees, we saw large ceramics factories. As we’d already seen: ceramics are very common in Valencia. In fact, this region accounts for 5% of the world’s production of it. It’s little wonder there are so many Porcelanosa stores here. I later found out this store, which we used to also have in my hometown of Leicester, actually originated in Villarreal, in the province of Valencia.
We also passed a number of castles, one of which was Castillo de Sagunto. The significance of this one is that it had been used as a staging ground by Christian knights, such as El Cid, for attacking the Moorish-occupied towns in the region. The name El Cid, is one we'd hear again today for a different reason.
After an hour we stopped at La Ribera for twenty minutes. Whilst there, Carmen bought me a palmier pastry shaped like a heart smothered in dark chocolate - they call it a Palmera gigante. This was probably around the halfway point, as by the time we parked up in Peñíscola, it was 11:00.
The old town of Peñíscola, sitting on a limestone cliff, was first settled by the Iberians, and later became a Roman outpost known as Tauronis. When the Moors took over, they created a fortress and renamed it Baniskula which is what today's name derives from. When King James I of Aragon reclaimed the town, the castle was taken over by the Knights Templar and then expanded.
After the end of the Knights Templar, during the Western Schism, Pope Benedict XIII fled to Peñíscola in 1411 after being declared an antipope. For the next twelve years it became his papal court.
After being led to the entrance to the old town, Portal de Sant Pedro, Miguel told us a little about the history of this town, and talked a little about why it was considered famous. It was the filming location for El Cid in 1961, and then again as Meereen for Game of Thrones.
Every time we stopped, Miguel would then tell us about the place, and would show us a clip from Game of Thrones season 6 so we could pair what we could see in front of us with what was on the screen. It was like this trip was completing the journey that had started in Croatia when I'd visited Kliss fortress, another filming location for Meereen.
We saw the Plaza de Santa Marìa, the Calvario Bastion, Parròquia Santa Maria, and eventually stopped at Brizza restaurant for lunch. Our plan had been to have snacks, but as we were stopping at a proper restaurant we felt we should join in - hopefully the weather would hold out though as it was looking dark out. I had a Brizza burger: chicken burger and bacon, and Carmen had a cuttlefish. These along with a drink came to €40. Often the meal time is a good chance to get to know fellow travellers, but in this instance we were sat at the quieter end of the table.
Just after 13:00 we began our walk to the Castell de Peñíscola, also known locally as Castell del Papa Luna. We passed La Casa de les Petxines, which is a house coated in shells. We also noticed we were passing a lot of shops aimed at tourists, but in another week these would all be closed as the tourist season comes to an end.
It took about an hour to be shown around the castle, and told about its features and its story. When questions were asked, I’d got a bad habit of providing the correct answer to the questions such as Friday 13th being considered unlucky due to it being the day the Templars are said to have been betrayed, and killed by the King of France. Another was when answering that their biggest contribution to the world was the invention of banking. It wasn't just Templar trivia though, I also answered questions about the features of the castle too.
What I didn’t know before today though was that during the time of there being three Popes, one of them resided in this castle. We were shown the rooms that had been used by the popes, and also shown the difference in stone work that was original, versus what had been restored (as some of it had been destroyed during the Peninsular War with Napoleon.
Once the tour was done we had an hour of free time, so we finished off the castle first, then wandered around the old town. Carmen bought a Studio Ghibli t-shirt, and I bought a coin with Templar on it for €3. It was a time when more of the Spanish I'd learnt from James whilst in Peru had come back to me.
¿Cuánto cuesta?
I probably butchered the pronunciation though, and I double checked I was right using Google Translate before saying it as it'd been so long. The response though was so fast, I couldn't hope to translate the numbers into English to understand. She then realised I didn't actually speak Spanish, and showed me the amount on a screen instead. The second time I tried this in Peñíscola, the shop owner smiled, said something I didn't understand, and after realising I spoke English, replied back to me in English.
At 15:35 we met back up with her others outside the castle and then walked back down to the mini bus for the drive back to Valencia. This time without pause, we got back around 17:30. From the metro there, we bought a new 48-hour metro ticket (SUMA T-2) for €7.50 each to cover the next couple of days.
The metro then got us as far as Bailén, and from there we walked back to the apartment. We had focaccia with Grana Padano melted on it, alongside some other snacks. We did plan on going out to the nearby churros place for dessert, but it started to rain so heavily that we thought better of it. Instead, we had half of the remaining farton each, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.