Day 66 – 13 September 2023 – Barcelona, Espana

Away at 8 am again for a long drive from Valencia to Barcelona along the Mediterranean coast. There are lots of hills close to both sides of the highway that have ruins of watch towers, stone defensive walls or fortresses, or sometimes, all three. Also big churches in most towns & the odd monastery or convent building. The flat land is now mostly full of crops, with riverbeds having more intensive agriculture, such as vegetables.

Around 9.30 am we turn off to Peniscola, another old port town with an intact fortress guarding the town & the harbour. Again this was originally a Roman fortress in the 1^st or 2^nd Century BC, the Arab fortress was built on top of previous fortresses, then the Christians with the Knight Templars rebuilding all of the fortress again in 1307. More rebuilds & renovations until now, with a large church & whitewashed buildings packed inside the walls.

There is a large temporary enclosure built on the beach & when we follow it along we come to a makeshift bullring, there has been bullfighting here recently. We walk along some of the outside wall & a man is fishing with some cord & a large fish bait, don’t know what for. There are masses of people on the beach & in swimming, it is around 25 C & sunny. The town is packed with apartment buildings, some right on the beachfront. Apparently Peniscola is a popular tourist destination for not only Spanish, but other nationalities throughout Europe.

More farms & more mountains with the agriculture getting a little more intensive with grapevines becoming more prevalent than olives. We stop at Sabate I Coca vineyard for a look through the small wine making museum, a talk on making wine & afterwards a tasting. One of the owners is very good at explaining how the vineyard was separate properties owned by his grandparent’s families, his father married the daughter from the other vineyard (his mother) & now they have one large vineyard. It is interesting how they have separated all the 72 grapevine fields into 18 different soil types on the 40 hectares under grapes. They also grow around 5 different types of grapes for the various wines.

The museum is very interesting with all sorts of old wine making tools & apparatus on display. Then he takes us to the winemaking area with lots of stainless steel tanks full of wine, some still actively being processed with stirring the must of the grapes occurring as he is talking. His explanation of the different processes they use for the different wine types is very interesting, especially the sparkling wine they make that is double fermented. Then we walk down 10 metres into the cellars where the wine is stored & matured, some of the bottles are more than 10 years old. The sparkling wine has to be turned a quarter turn every week now & he explains that process, as the bottle is under seven atmospheres of pressure & they have to be careful not to knock the bottle as it will explode. Upstairs again & he takes us through the bottle cleaning, removing the sediment from inside the bottle by freezing, then re-corking, labelling & packaging. All very interesting.

Now for the best part, tasting. Outside under the shade of umbrellas some salami & local cheeses are on plates on the top of old wine barrels with wine glasses. He fills our glasses with sparkling wine & explains the tastes of the wine, then takes around more bottles of different types before finishing with a red wine that is also very good. All the wines we tasted were grown on this farm. As we leave there are tractors on the roads towing trailers either full of grapes or emptied. Grape picking is in full swing in this part of Spain. As we drive towards Barcelona we see a high range of mountains in the distance with sawtooth like peaks, it is called Montserrat (serrated mountain)

It is not far into Barcelona & after we check in to the hotel we are taken by bus up to Parc Guell. We have been there & toured the site on our previous trip, so we let the rest of the group to enjoy the work of Antoni Gaudi & we went for a walk around that part of Barcelona & had a bite to eat whilst enjoying the fantastic hilltop view over Barcelona & out to sea. Afterwards we are driven past the old Barcelona Bullring, now no longer in use as bullfighting has been banned in Barcelona, to the old Olympic port. We walk around the port area enjoying looking at the boats, the ocean, the beach & the sun setting over the city. Plus a gelato. Another great day.