Sergovia

After visiting the city walls of Avila, we were here in Sergovia to see another ancient engineering marvel, the Roman aqueduct. We had stayed overnight in the Bullring car park which conveniently is quite close to the start of the remaining part of the aqueduct. The first part is quite underwhelming as it looks like a brick wall with a small channel in the middle, but as you follow it down the hill arches appear and grow in height.

When we reached the town the scale of the aqueduct is quite breathtaking.

The aqueduct was built by by the Romans around the first century to bring water down fro the hills to the town and the temple. There is still one of the large cistern buildings that was used to purify the water after its long journey.

It won a civil engineering award in 1999

We needed our customary cafe con leche so we went to Dunkin Donuts to soak up some caffeine, sugar and culture.

Soaking up the caffeine, sugar and culture

After we were refreshed I wandered through the main tourist street looking in the shops and Dave walked up the steps throw the old city wall to get a better view of the aqueduct.

We then got back in The Van for the 200km drive north towards Burgos the realisation hitting us that we’d be on the ferry back to the UK in a few days time.

We were on a main road pointing out various animals and landscape features to each other as we tend to do when Dave spotted a unique looking building in the distance. As we got closer we could see that it was a wine bodega and shop….

We turned off the main road and found our way to the car park, the building look closed with only a few cars parked up but we ventured on. It was opened and we were welcomed in. There wasn’t a tour available but we were encouraged to tour the building and visit the wine shop. The building was designed by Sir Norman Foster and was really impressive. The design means that the tractors bringing the grapes from the vineyard can drive onto the roof of the building and drop the grapes in for processing. The process continues down the building to the barrels in the basement.

After admiring the building we visited the shop where the assistant explained all the different wines to us, and then we bought 3 of the cheapest bottles.

Wine!

This little unexpected adventure reminds us that VanLife is all about planning but that we do need to remember to go with the flow and follow our noses to things that interest us.

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