Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Valley of the Fallen

We have travelled about 30miles only today and are staying at a huge site (we are pitch 1318) near the royal residence of El Escorial. It's also about 1hr by bus from the centre of Madrid.
We stopped en route at the Valley of the Fallen, which is a monument for all those who died in the Spanish civil war. There is an underground basilica bigger than St Peters in Rome built into solid rock by prisoners of war. It has General Franco's tomb and 50,000 Spaniards, from both sides, who died in the conflict between 1936 and 1939. The site is up in the mountains and the huge granite cross is visible for many miles around.
It's been a warm sunny day but there still snow on the nearby mountains and the temperature soon drops when the sun goes down. There is a busy holiday weekend coming up so we will probably stay here till next Monday. Every thing on site including 3 swimming pools!

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