Tuesday, May 6
We were driving to the town of Burgo de Osma this morning, thinking we'd tour the Caliphate Fortress of Gozmar aka Castillo (Castle) Gozmar. An old Moor fortress which changed hand several times up to and during the Reconquista.
However, as we neared the town of Peñafiel, we spotted an interesting castle on the hillside, overlooking the town. A quick Googling and we decided to stop.
Things looked promising in terms of no crowds at first:
No tour buses!
Model of the castle's original build
Alas, you must have a guide apparently and we had to wait for more people to form a group. Unfortunately, this proved to be a full busload of tourists. Sigh/ugh.
Still, the restored castle is quite nice, just make sure large tour groups don't sneak up. There's a wine museum onsite as well if you've enology tendencies.
Inside of main tower
Views from the main platform and atop the main tower:
The group we got stuck in.
A little bit of people deletion
We escaped the tour group at the point where there was a wine tasting. We finished driving to Burgo de Osma and got some lunch:
Pork Loin
After lunch, it was close to 3 p.m. and after check-in at the hotel we napped, hard.
Couple of hours later we set out to explore the Gormaz Castle. It's not a "managed" site so you can wander on your own. We were the only ones there for most of the time we explored, so it was great!
A bit of a steep path to the entrance later:
The village of Gormaz
The path up from car lot
See the arch? That IDs it as Moorish.
What you'd see back when planning
To attack the castle.
As you can see, very cool historic castle ruins!
Once back in Burgo de Osma, we checked out a nice viewpoint of Castle Osma (closed).
We then drove up to the Uxama Watch Tower, again an unmanaged tourist stop and no people!
Uxama
You can climb some circular stairs to the top.
Burgo de Osma, with the castle
on the right.
We the went back to the hotel for the rest of the evening. Some big cycling event in town tomorrow so we'll be leaving before 9 a m. for Zaragoza.
6 comments:
Castles are so intersting. I visit two in Germany but those you are seeing look awesome.
The second one, Oz, though just ruins, was best: no people and cool remains.
If you can get there by tourist bus, the location costs an entry fee and is crowded, as soon as to have to walk a little... no cost, no tourists (except yourself). Loving it! I have visited so many castles and ruins in Europe but I still could do some more... and the second one is worth a trip!
Yep, SonjaM, the second one is in the top 3 this trip!
Lots of castles to see. I like Sonja’s approach. If tour buses go there, go elsewhere…
True enough RichardM, this tour group however, showed up after we'd paid....we do avoid tour groups of we spot them first.
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