Had great lunch up at Santa Elena earlier this week with our friends Eva and Oscar. There’s a stone refugio behind the church with an open fireplace to barbeque on. Gorged oursleves on chops, pancetta and longaniza.

Santa Elena is fascinating. It’s built at the site of a cave that was a pre-christian worship site. A spring comes out of the cave which is considered miraculous as it has sudden surges and starts and stops regularly.

We were looking at the waterfall under the church when suddenly one of these surges happened. The flow increased really quickly and flooded the steps, fountain and the meadow. It wasincredible to see – I’ve never seen it happen before.It stayed like this for about an hour and then went back to it’s previous calm state.

The water increased from this trickle....

.... to this torrent in under a minute

Oscar had borrowed the key for the church which is looked after by one of the bars in Biescas! There is door at the back of the church that leads to the cave behind.

Legend tells that Santa Elena (Saint Helen) hid in the cave during her travels spreading the early Christian faith to prevent being caught by Roman soldiers who were searching for her. The shepherds that showed her the cave became Spain’s first Christians.

Door leading to the cave at Santa Elena

Great day out – thank you Oscar and Eva for organising it.