Through the Killing Fields – Mora to La Fatarella

We got up just before 8am for breakfast after a good night sleep. However after yesterday’s rain    we had a return of the cold. Gazza was better than me. I was ill again. After a great breakfast of toast and hand-made and home-made marmalades, Gary walked down to the river to spot carp (unsuccessfully in the cold and misty morning) and I went back to bed for an hour. I needed it and woke more refreshed. 

We were heading for La Fatarella today, a long walk along a pilgrimage route to a monastery to San Jeroni up in the mountains. Over the tops, down to the next valley, up and over the next ridge and onward to the highlands and the village high on a plateau. 

It was cold but dry and we cut a good pace up a thousand feet to San Jeroni monastery and then up another 500 feet beyond. 

I’m not as fit as I was before my fall but I kept going today as well as I could in an uphill struggle. Gazza done good yet again. Focused and determined. We reached the summit of the first range, dropped down to the valley floor and looked for the footpath to take us over the next mountains. It wasn’t there! The footpath was so overgrown we couldn’t find it. Instead we had to wind our way around the valleys for a couple of miles to get to where we should have been an hour earlier. The land was rich and beautiful though, with almond trees, olives, vines and hazlenuts. 

The weather was still iffy but we got our heads down and cracked on.

Reaching a main road that cut north to the road to La Fatarella, and into very emotional and historically-laden country. Eighty years ago during the Spanish civil war the Republican forces launched an overnight attack across the Ebro river, including Mora where we stayed last night. They surprised Franco’s forces and pushed up the way we are heading towards La Fatarella. Young lads from Spain, reinforced by international brigades from the UK, other European countries and the USA fought the might of fascist Franco, supported by Hitler and Mussolini. 

The views from the hilltops were awesome, and must be unchanged since the days that these lads spent four months defending them. It was a long slog going up the valley.

 But getting to the top we saw a sign to a landmark of the civil war. This was something we couldn’t ignore. The trenches and shelter from attacks and bombing by the Nationalists and Nazis to provide a last defence for La Fatarella.

When your head covers in goose pimples it doesn’t stop for a while. We wandered around lost in awe at the conditions these lads fought in to the last over four long and bloody months.

We walked, largely in silence, to La Fatarella.

The majesty of the Pyrenees, 100 miles away, was covered in snow and sunlight behind Gazza’s shoulders.

A good meal, a few beers and a good night’s sleep. God bless the young lads who gave their lives for democracy and decency. Gary’s face says it all. 

Night night.