A Pearl Of A Celebration In A Castle

Time that you enjoyed wasting was not wasted at all

Monday 30th May 2022

Tomorrow arrived as expected, so now it is Monday, the last one of the month and important things happened on this day. Later this week we’ll be in France, but for now we’ve got the last bit of Spain to conquer.

Today the bed was raised to the ceiling, and it will stay up there for two nights because we’re going to stay in a castle! We spent a bit more time tidying up and cleaning Reggie before we left Camping El Solsonès mid-morning.  The pretty 20kms drive from Solsona to Cardona took no time at all and our destination was well signposted. Reggie was parked on a lower bastion of the castle with a nice view over the countryside and mountains for two days.  It was still early so we wandered around the outside of the castle and the cloisters for a while.

Then in a wave of excitement, we walked into the castle.  At 11:30am we found the reception desk for the Parador de Cardona and joy of joys, we didn’t have to wait until 2pm, our room was already available.  A quick dash back to Reggie to throw together a bag of clothes, washbags, etc., and we checked into room 620.  It felt a little bit bonkers, travelling in a motorhome and then sleeping in a castle. A bit of tourism fantasy, I guess.

We did a little happy dance when we opened the door to our room. A four-poster bed sat in the middle of the room and the plunging view from the castle to the fields and to the mountains beyond was absolutely lovely.  I felt like a princess sitting in the picture window of our room.  There’s a real bathroom with a real toilet and a shower and a bath.  I might have to have a swish in that bath before we leave, because there won’t be another chance to do that before we get home, certainly not in Reggie.  An afternoon siesta, for no reason at all, on a fancy bed felt like an extravagant thing to do and was most enjoyable.  

Later in the afternoon, huge cumulus clouds gathered over the mountains, but the sun was still shining at 8pm when we walked down to the cavernous mediaeval refectory for a 3-course dinner.

Tuesday 31^st May 2022

A tiny crack of sunlight pushed its way through the gap in the bedroom curtains and landed on my eyelids. Today is our 30^th wedding anniversary.  Gosh have we really been married that long.  It doesn’t seem like ten years since we celebrated our anniversary in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in France on our first trip travelling in Eileen The Motorhome.

I opened the windows and the aura of foreign smells swept in with the breeze. We were a fair distance from the sea, but there was definitely a salty whiff in the air. We gorged on an enormous breakfast, and I truly mean gorged.  After eating too much, I still managed to squeeze in churros with thick hot chocolate.  Rodney declined to help me.

After such a lazy day yesterday and too much eating, we needed to get out and see where the peasants lived below the castle. Plus, Rodney wanted to take me down a salt mine for our anniversary treat !!!  A bus took us down to the tunnel entry under the Muntanya de Sal (Mountain of Salt), where we were kitted out with hair nets and hard hats.  The guide only spoke Catalan, so we managed to download the English audio guide on to one phone, put our heads together and held it to our ears, quietly.  We were underground for about an hour, wandering through tunnels and a most stunning cavern with beautiful salt stalactites and stalagmites.  Apparently, there are miles and miles of tunnels and caverns under that mountain, but none of it is mined anymore.

We wound our way through the narrow streets of Cardona, which by now were empty and closed.  A café in in the Placa de la Fira had a few people sitting outside for lunch, so we picked a table and asked the waitress if we could just have a cold drink (we were still stuffed from breakfast!). Our second highlight of the day was watching a cat poking a rat and not really attempting to catch it.  I failed to get a photo because when a dog started barking with excitement the rat hid under a planter box, the cat lost interest and trotted off and the dog sat down again beside its owner and looked bored. 

Another afternoon siesta whiled away some of the afternoon and then we thought drinks before dinner would be a good idea. Wrong!  My most expensive gin and tonic ever at €13 ($22, or £12) tipped me into complete drunkenness and I wanted to go to bed rather than eat a nice anniversary dinner at 8pm.  ‘Dear alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all’; I really shouldn’t go there. Despite another huge meal and nearly a litre of water, I was still drunk when we left the restaurant at 10pm, so we went out on to the castle battlements to look over the scenery in the dark.  It was magical up there and did help me a bit, before we crashed into bed with full bellies again.

We’ll start tomorrow with another enormous breakfast in a beautiful mediaeval dining room.