{"id":18800,"date":"2015-06-04T11:57:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T09:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/?p=18800"},"modified":"2015-06-04T11:57:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T09:57:28","slug":"matarranya-psst-ive-found-spains-tuscany-the-sunday-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/?p=18800","title":{"rendered":"Matarranya: Psst… I\u2019ve found Spain\u2019s Tuscany | The Sunday Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Origen: Psst… I\u2019ve found Spain\u2019s Tuscany | The Sunday Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Psst… I\u2019ve found Spain\u2019s Tuscany<\/h2>\n
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Matarra\u00f1a has all the vineyards and romantic villages of the Italian region \u2014 but no tourists<\/h3>\n
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Richard Mellor <\/span> Published: 31 May 2015<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Who wants to do nothing in the middle of nowhere? That\u2019s what the locals asked Jemma Markham when she and her late husband, Piers, opened the Torre del Visco hotel in the Spanish region of Matarra\u00f1a, in Aragon, in 1995. \u201cThey thought we were bloody mad,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, with the rooms full, the Markhams\u2019 sanity has been proven. Yet foreign visitors remain mostly absent from Matarra\u00f1a: little more than a thousand came in 2014. That despite a dreamy blend of rivers, vineyards, olive plantations and pine-forested peaks that has earned it the nickname of Spain\u2019s Tuscany.<\/p>\n

Why such a secret? It\u2019s because Matarra\u00f1a appears, initially, damned pesky to access, with mountains all around and no railways or autopistas. Spaniards themselves have barely heard of the place. Yet Barcelona is only three hours away. In September, Ryanair will make things slightly easier when it launches a new flight to Castellon airport from Stansted and Bristol.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe village of Valderrobres (Alamy) <\/span><\/span> So, the middle of nowhere, more or less. But do nothing? That\u2019s only one option. Within half an hour of gulping down a welcome cerveza <\/i>at Torre del Visco (doubles from \u00a3140; torredelvisco.com<\/a>), I\u2019m standing behind El Salt waterfall, being splashed by its invigorating spray.<\/p>\n

The next morning, I trek El Parrizal, a five-hour trail through Els Ports, the blocky mountains that may have inspired Picasso\u2019s first experiments with cubism. El Parrizal is a work of art itself: rapids are interspersed with pools of green water in which snakes swim. Walnut trees teeter on sheer slopes, golden eagles launch themselves from crags.<\/p>\n

I borrow a bike from the hotel and follow Jemma\u2019s directions to Tastavins pools. Leaving my cycle beside a clump of purple lilies, I pad down to a gentle, pebbly basin, secluded and deep enough for diving. The water\u2019s cool, but I dry off on great river-smoothed rocks, wafts of wild rosemary tickling my nose.<\/p>\n

A similarly olfactory dinner follows: fragrant fish and sucking pig, served with vegetables from Torre del Visco\u2019s farm. Even better are the breakfasts: homemade lemon curd, cheese plates and cured Aragonese hams, which I devour at the kitchen\u2019s communal wooden table.<\/p>\n

\"TakeTake the El Parrizal trail through Els Ports <\/span><\/span> I don\u2019t linger too long, as today I\u2019m headed 30 minutes south, to the remoter-still Mas de la Serra, another luxury residence, with the sort of views one might anticipate of a medieval former watchtower (doubles from \u00a3120, B&B, masdelaserra.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

From here, I set out to explore Matarra\u00f1a\u2019s caramel-coloured towns. A huge-ceilinged gothic church crowns Valderrobres, where colourful posters advertise imminent fiestas. Further north, hilltop Calaceite is straight out of a Tuscan textbook: lanes, lanterns and sleepy squares dominated by a baroque bell tower.<\/p>\n

Rock art, the Mas de Bu\u00f1ol vulture sanctuary and La Via Verde, a railway turned cycle path, offer further distraction. Mas de la Serra\u2019s willing butler, Luis, offers trips to them all, plus fossil-hunting for kids, rock-climbing, wine tours and horse riding through almond groves.<\/p>\n

Those same almond groves make my trip\u2019s standout meal possible: a slightly sweet almond-and-truffle soup in Mas de la Serra\u2019s restaurant. The chef here hails from Peru, hence the pre-meal pisco sours and her lamb stew\u2019s subtle coriander kick. A much greater shock comes when, from a patio, I see ibex balancing on top of more spindly almond trees.<\/p>\n

\"QuietlyQuietly brilliant: poppies in Matarra\u00f1a <\/span><\/span> Later, on a balcony at the hotel, I toast Matarra\u00f1a over glasses of Scottish single malt. (The hotel\u2019s founder is Alasdair Grant, of the distillery family.) As the peaty nightcap slips down, I succumb to the silence and let myself be hypnotised by the stars above.<\/p>\n

Here I am, after all, in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/span> Richard Mellor was a guest of Torre del Visco, Mas de la Serra and British Airways, which has returns from Heathrow or Gatwick to Barcelona from \u00a368pp (ba.com<\/a>)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Origen: Psst… I\u2019ve found Spain\u2019s Tuscany | The Sunday Times Psst… I\u2019ve found Spain\u2019s Tuscany Matarra\u00f1a has all the vineyards and romantic villages of the Italian region \u2014 but no tourists Richard Mellor Published: 31 May 2015 Who wants to do nothing in the middle of nowhere? That\u2019s what the locals asked Jemma Markham when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matarranya"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18805,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800\/revisions\/18805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lafranja.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}