Oria, Spain - December 23, 2020

 

Fuente, Oria

We had previously tried to bicycle to the village of Oria nestled in the mountains of the next valley, however, due to outdated and missing signage for the route, we never actually made it on our bikes. In one of my stilted Spanish conversations with the goat herder, Juan, he had told me that he and his 8 brothers had been born in Oria and that he still visits there often to go to the bakery and get water from the fuente (source). The water in the house we are staying at is delivered to a large tank by the city of Chirivel about every 5 weeks. It may be drinkable, but it is extremely hard, mineral rich water. Most visitors to the area buy bottled water because of the impurities. Herman and I decided to try finding the fuente in Oria in order to refill our water bottles. We drove SAM there and were able to fill around 100 liters of drinking water. The water is filtered naturally through the limestone and sandstone of the mountains around Oria. 

We love Oria! It certainly helped that it was a beautiful day. Orea has about 2,300 residents and is not at all geared for tourism. There used to be a castle at the top of the highest point of the village, but now there are only a couple of walls and a cell phone tower there. The town wraps like a doughnut around the base of the castle hill. It was a surprise that there were three separate small food stores in the village. 

This is a picture of the Basilica de nuestra señora de las Mercedes was taken from the castle ruin above the town looking out over the cathedral which was built in the second half of the 18th century. It is baroque inside, but we were unable to visit the interior. 

Here is a picture of the one remaining castle wall and the cell tower. The walls were originally almost 2 meters thick!

The following pictures are of our walk around the twisty narrow streets of the village. I only took one picture, but there were cats everywhere! 

This house must belong to someone with a green thumb!

These hand painted street signs were on every street. We thought this one was funny...

December and this tree is completely budding!

                               Some steep streets!