Fromista, more than just a place to empty the ****

Fromista, Wednesday 27 March 2013

Fromista delighted us, I’ll explain later why our expectations were minimal. It had two rather interesting churches, complicated in style, with a rich history – one was now a renovation project. The calm Spanish village, had a small shop which sold mushrooms so big they could have been in a museum. And for the first time we saw storks – nesting on a water tower and the church towers. After that we saw them everywhere, nesting on every man-made tower and pylon in the whole of Spain and Portugal. What do they eat? and how so many are sustained? is puzzling. What did they nest on before we made so many towers for them? Or are they a very, very recent product of evolution?

We first found Fromista by accident on our way down to Morocco. We had turned off the main road looking for a quiet side road and layby for the night. Once we had turned off, we saw signs to an “aire” of sort - a simple but adequate, parking space with a water tap and a place to dump the sh**. This is not to be flushed away lightly, both Spain and Portugal have an abundance of places where we can pull over for the night before moving on. But this simple aire offered us two valuable extras compared with a roadside stop. First, was clear permission to be there, the second, even rarer, was a place to dump the sh** - not that we needed to on either occasion. We were also drawn to Fromista because we knew where is was, and could easily find it in the dark after driving a couple of hours from the ferry terminal.

In the morning we ventured into Fromista itself, because we wanted to make the journey itself a bigger part of the holiday. Photos are below: 

It’s well worth a visit even if you don’t have sh** to empty.