Phil and Dee's Travels

Saturday, 22 March 2025

The Old City of Salamanca

We spent a day exploring the centre of the impressive UNESCO city of Salamanca, starting at the Plaza Mayor.

The Casa de las Conchas - the House of the Shells - a 16th century Gothic palace covered in symbolic seashell motifs. It houses the city's library.

This is the view from the Scala Coeli - a climb up the Clerecia Towers. Originally designed to bring believers closer to Heaven.

And a good place for a stork nest!

A bit of dodgy lifting - visual webbing sling inspection failed!

The outside of Casa Lis, a pretty cool building - Art Nouveau and Art Deco museum - a visit for another day.

The tower of the old Cathedral that we would visit another day.

School kids looking for an Astronaut!

An Astronaut on a 15th century cathedral - there is a good reason!!

Inside the really impressive new & old Cathedrals and Cloisters.

It was here that Phil became Sesenta anos - muy viejo (very old)!

We left Cholet with a fully working clutch, or so we thought. Once we entered Spain it was a problem again, so we had to visit another Ford garage, this time in Salamanca on the remote high plains. We managed to reach a campsite just outside the city, where we demounted Muy, ready for a week at least while the thrust bearing and clutch are replaced.

This time we hired a car and visited some local National Parks as well as the centre of the city itself.

Perena de la Ribera

The Pozo de los Humos waterfall, west of the city and near the border with Portugal, which was impressive from the viewpoint.

And even better from close up! Dee is in orange for scale.

We also visited La Sierra de Francia further south and in particular La Alberca and Mogarraz.

Lots of Jamon (Ham) for sale.

Mogarraz is famous for the portraits painted on the walls of the houses of previous residents. The portraits are based on photographs from a local photographer who took the pictures in 1967 to help provide his neighbours with national identity cards.

A very cute but shy kitten!

This is the Pena de Francia at 1700 metres with beautiful views all around. There is a monastery up there, on a pilgrimage route and currently covered in snow! We saw a wild boar (nearly run it over), a mountain goat with baby and some huge Griffon vultures.

We are really enjoying our unscheduled stop in this area - and loving speaking in Spanish again! Between us we manage quite well :).

The road to Portugal - now in between dogs again :(

We have left on another road trip but this time without Purdy - which is very sad. There is a big space where her bed used to be in Muy and no Purdy on the back seat of the truck. To make some positive from this we have brought two folding bikes (Bromptons) with us that have taken up the back seat.

We drove to Portsmouth for the ferry to St Malo and planned to head south through France to Spain and then Portugal. Before we left, I (Phil) had noticed some difference in clutch pressure but the local garage said it was fine.

However, when driving through France the clutch got worse so we had to stop at a Ford garage in Cholet for the clutch master cylinder to be replaced. Muy was left on the truck so, after a night in a hotel near the Ford garage, we used our bikes and took the train to Angers where we stayed for the weekend, trying out some of the local cycle routes.