When you have a new driver in the family who wants to practice driving, it is likely that he will always answer positively if you ask him if he wants to take a ride. And so it happened that when I asked my son about it two days ago, he of course agreed right away. The only doubt was where to go; we wanted to drive out of town, and looking at the map, we decided that it would be a town called Sax.
We chose the regional road instead of the highway, and although there are more curves as you go through some hills, the views were so nice that we took the same route on the way back. My son was driving well; I just guided him where to go and where to park. When we left the car on the main street of this town, we headed toward the old town with the goal of climbing up to the castle. He told me he saw this castle perched on a hill every time he passed by on the highway on the bus, but he had never seen it up close. So here we are, off to conquer it then!
The Gran Vía of this little town is, of course, not the same as that of Madrid, for example. 😅 However, I noticed some murals, nice houses with facades of different colours. The house with the red bricks, where one of the main banks of Spain now has its office, was the house of a certain Pascual Carrión. According to the information I found about him, he was an important agricultural engineer at the beginning of the 20th century.
Continuing our walk straight down this street, we came to the Church of the Assumption and the town hall. The door of the church was open, so we entered for a moment to see its interior.
On this wall of the church, we can see two little windows. I thought we would see the paintings of the stained glass windows better from the interior, but it seems the light was too strong, so in my photo, we see just two shiny rectangles. 🤣
The town hall is located on the other side of the church, and from here we start to climb towards the hill and the fortification.
Those who happened to read my posts last year too, could remember (if not, no worries, it was just one post about this town and the names of the streets I mentioned here ) that there are some interesting names given to the streets that lead to the castle. For example, I was joking about the "dangerous street" as its name is Calle del Peligro.
I have no idea why it is dangerous, but we continued up these stairs. You have to reach the street San Blas, then turn right and head toward the little church of the same name - Ermita de San Blas.
From here, the metal stairs lead to the top of the hill. From this angle, the rock looks like an animal, like some kind of lying lion or reptile. Maybe a dragon.
Views that can be seen if you look back toward the town.
My son and I conquered the fortification without any battle, as in the end, there were no dragons or other creatures to defend the castle. It was just a rocky formation, but it still has an interesting shape. It is amazing where these fortifications were built many centuries ago - on top of these rocks and stones, to have a good visibility, but I imagine how difficult it must have been to build them.
The only thing preventing us from entering the castle was the closed wooden gate. Like last year, it was closed, so once again we could only see it from outside the walls.
The driving exercise combined with walking up this castle, seeing nice views and feeling the refreshing breeze unfortunately finished with a wasp sting. A wasp or similar insect wanted to attack me, I chased it away, but then it landed directly on my son's leg and stung him. 😬
Now it is ok, but after the encounter with the wasp, we searched for a pharmacy and bought an insect bite relief cream and drove home. Sure, he was ok to drive back, although I asked if he wanted to let me take the steering wheel. 😆
