2018-09-17 Santa Coloma de Queralt to Camping Prades Park

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Santa Coloma de Queralt to Prades Park camping via Siurana

Santa Coloma de Queralt to Camping Prades Park

We sleep very deeply all night. In the morning there is thick fog, it fills the football and tennis courses and covers the glass around the tennis court with condensation. After about an hour the sun comes up and the fog is soon gone. Another baking hot, blue sky day. We walk down to the old town for photographs and find it is full of market stalls, what a bonus. We wander around but don’t buy anything. Call in Spar and buy fresh milk, Serrano ham, mushrooms and Cava which all cost €38. The ladies behind the counter do not speak English, so Alan is very happy to use his Spanish, it makes all the effort of learning worthwhile and demonstrates that not all the English as lazy when it comes to learning languages.

From St Coloma we take the C241 to Montblanc, N240 to Vimbola, then the much smaller and narrower TV7004 through Ulldermollins. From here we turn inwards towards the Siurana gorge and climb 8km upwards to the small mountain top village of Siurana. The scenery is spectacular with walls of vertical rock on each side and we climb by a series of hair pin bends up to the village. It is quite a climb for us in places, but we are rewarded at the top with a good car park and magnificent views all around. We park up and walk into the village. It is perched atop a rocky outcrop on the Siurana ridge, part of El Mola that surround and enclose the Montsant and Priorat wine growing areas, the two areas we have come to explore. After about an hour we return to the camper and begin our descent to Albarca (another very high and isolated mountain village) taking the T701 to Prades situated in the middle of the El Mola circle. Here we stop at an ACSI campsite which costs
€19/night.

We are very disappointed to find that the services are set up for bungalows with excellent roads and facilities for these, but the 60 spaces for campers are run-down, dirty and neglected, with litter and dog pooh. There are about 15 of the pitches with very old and dirty shanties that have been on them for years. For us, we just need a place to eat and sleep and this is fine, but this is not a good ACSI campsite. In the busy periods it would be neither quiet nor peaceful, there are a lot of pitches around us.

It is very quiet and, apart from the workmen repairing the road, we think we are the only ones here…. which I think says it all.