Castellers in Reus - Valls, Spain
Valls, Spain
Don't you love early flight? For local travel for pleasure they are great, but who wants to get up at 3 a.m. to drive to East Midlands airport. Some site we'd checked for driving times gave us 1 hour and 1 minute from Wolves to EMA. We did it, starting at 03:15 and getting green lights all the way, even on the A5 and going at least at the speed limit all the way in 1 hour and 4 minutes. To do it in the time the website claimed and at a 'normal' travelling time you'd have to severely break the speed limits.
Breakfast at EMA was £9.95. I only mention this to allow a bit of 'compare & contrast' with lunch. Our Ryanair flight was quite full and left early, getting into Reus about 25 minutes ahead of schedule which was nice but it also meant that three or four flights had touched down together so we had a bit of a wait for the rental car and discovered that most English don't know the difference between a delta and an estuary. I'd like to say that it's subtle, but it isn't. flying with Ryanair anyway.
Our run of luck with Ryanair flights had continued though and we managed yet again to get the extra leg-room seats by the over-wing emergency exits despite not having booked them or payed for Priority Boarding, a concept we don't really understand anyway because if you're so keen to be treated a bit more luxuriously that you're happy to pay the extra, why are you
In fact I'd thought of heading down to the delta for the first part of the day but the draw of the Lleida steps and the fact that we'd paid for a full tank of diesel drew us north towards Lleida and the Aragon steppes - and hopefully some birding without the relentless winds of last month.
The toll motorway got us up there pretty fast and before long we were parking up by the mediaeval bridge in Ballobar where the level of the river seemed much higher than in May and the village church seemed festooned with White Storks that we didn't remember seeing last time. In case there was a chance of a decent photo we went to have a quick look around the village. We were quite thirsty anyway.
Stork photos taken, a huge stork primary feather found and a canya and a Vichy Catalan later and we were back on the road heading for the some sites for a bit of birding and of course a menu del dia.
Not much further down the quiet road to Alcolea de la Cinca is the Ermita de Santa Maria de Chalamera where despite the photos, the wind was so strong last month that a few minutes walk into the teeth of it was exhausting. It sits on the edge of a plateau and is very exposed. We didn't spot any Black Wheatears this time and the kestrels that had been very active close to the church were also nowhere to be seen but at least this time it was possible to get out of the car without having to hold onto the door lest it be blown off its hinges.
We had a look at the tiny pool beside the church which had plenty of butterflies and bugs around it and possibly two different species of frog (we'll need to research that later) and we found some yellow thistles and some possible orchids that will probably be even harder to identify.
Moving on we stopped again at the area where we had seen an Egyptian Vulture and a Short-toed Eagle in May, just before the start of the impressive cliffs south of Alcolea de la Cinca. There were still plenty of birds around although not so much evidence of the birds of prey and carrion we'd seen a month or so earlier but we were briefly curious about some Red-rumped Swallows that we found. I thought that the species did not occur in Catalunya but there were several here and they appeared to be visiting the same part of the cliffs repeatedly implying that they were nesting in the area. The species is a *******e to confuse (in Europe, at least) with any other and we got some very good views of the birds as they sallied back and forth from the cliffs. A check later on the internet told us that they had been very uncommon in the region with the stronghold being around Siurana, a cliff-top village that we'd visited in November 2012 but that they had recently started expanding their range in the region.
It was feeling much like lunchtime and part of our region for coming this way rather than exploring a different part of the steppes was El Portal restaurant in Alcolea de la Cinca. We parked outside and walked in to the dining room to find that it was very busy, but fortunately the table that we’d had last time was still available so we sat there again. It was a repeat experience of our other visit with a strong menu and well prepared and presented meals at a bargain price. It was no surprise that the restaurant was full of locals and a stream of them arrived whilst we were dining to ensure that the ambience remained jolly and the tables stayed occupied.
Time was marching on and we had plans for the evening and night. After paying our €20 for fours courses including drinks we plotted a course back to the main road network, deciding again to take the toll motorway for speed. This took us through some areas that we hadn’t seen before and we noticed a high concentration of Common Buzzards as we got closer to the motorway and in one field we spotted what we thought was a Montagu’s Harrier on a post which somehow vanished as we reached for our binoculars.
Check-in at the Class Hotel in Valls was perhaps 30 minutes later than I would have liked (our fault) but it was quick and minutes later we were back in the car and on our way to Reus where their Sant Pere festival was underway and where, most importantly there was a castellers event. One of the British castellers who we had met in London was in Valls for Sant Joan and had said that he might meet us there with his partner.
I seem to have problems driving in Reus. I don’t know why but I can’t seem to work it out. I can usually find it alright but once I’m there finding my way around, finding somewhere to park and worst of all finding my way out again all seem to be problematic. It all seemed to start quite well this time until I tried a car park that we’d been following signs for for quite some time to find that it had about 20% more cars parked than it was designed for. This made both manoeuvering and getting out quite difficult. After this I followed all kinds of hunches with no luck until I came around a corner to find a car-sized space marked out for parking at the end of a row. There was no car in it, so I nipped in quickly and looked around to see if there were any restrictions or charges. I couldn’t see anything at all that told me I shouldn’t be there so we grabbed our stuff and off we went to the town centre.
The large and handsome town square of Reus wasn’t too hard to find and when we got there it was apparent that the castellers had already started, although the crowd was less dense than I’d expected. Supporting the Xiquets de Reus today where the Castellers de Sants and the Castellers de la Vila de Gracia which meant that we were in for a colourful evening.
Vila de Gracia build their castells in a vivid blue; the Borinots (Sants) wear an austere grey and the Xiquets de Reus appear in orange. As an added bonus this was the first time we’d seen Xiquets de Reus, bringing our total for the year to date to 8 colles with 5 new ones (we weren’t sure whether we’d seen Colla Joves Xiquets de Valls before but we didn’t think so).
This was still quite early in the casteller’s season but the order of the weekend was going to be big and difficult castles. Julie keeps quite a close eye on who is doing what via Facebook and other feeds and we’d noted that many colles have been putting up lots of 8 and 9 level constructions and also that numerous firsts were being built by colles big and small. With over a year to go to the next Concurs de Castells (http://eng.concursdecastells.cat/ ) standards are getting higher – literally.
Today’s event which was a part of the Festa Major de Sant Pere was graced by each team completing a "torre de vuit amb folre", a castle eight levels high with two people on most of the levels and a large group providing support on the second level, which is quite a difficult castle along with several tres, quatre or cinc de vuits (3, 4 or 5 of 8) and from Sants an amazing Pilar de Sis. A pilar is a tower of just one person on each level, so this was a six-person high tower of one person on top of another (except for the pinya at the bottom, of course). We were pretty sure that we had not seen a Pilar de Sis before.
All of the construtions were successfully taken down without incident and as a consequence all the colles seemed pleased with their performances. At the end of the session there was a gallop, when the enxanetas and dossos and other small members of the teams ride on the shoulders of some of the bigger ones and dance around in circles to the music of the drum and graller groups. To our surpise, part of the musical accompaniment was the theme tune from the enduringly popular British comedy series, "Blackadder".
After the excitement we met up with Anna and Cuss of Colla Joves Xiquets de Valls who had been for a day out and had stopped on the way back to see the castellers and who we found at the Café de Reus. We discussed what was happening in Valls over the next couple of days before heading off there, dropping the car off at the hotel sometime after 10 p.m. and then getting a taxi into the town centre.
There was music in the centre as part of Valls’ Sant Joan celebrations and we needed something to eat. We were beginning to flag a little because we had by now been awake for about 18 hours having only had a couple of hours of sleep the night before. A full meal seemed like a bad idea and in the end we settled on a takeaway pizza between us, that we ate on Placa de Pati whilst listening to Orquestra Montgrins, who we last saw in about 2004. They didn’t disappoint and as we expected performed a series of well known Spanish and international songs. I think we’d have liked to have stopped longer but we definitely needed some sleep and we were in bed before 1 a.m.