Travel Tuesday: A Templar Church and Prehistoric Paintings in Soria, Spain

In the Spanish province of Soria there's a narrow valley called El Cañon del Rio Lobos that leads to this, La Ceuva de San Bartolomé. On its walls are faint Bronze Age drawings, so faint I couldn't get a good shot of them. Sorry! They're hard to interpret anyway. They're mostly vertical or zigzag lines, some of which look vaguely human.

From out of the cave you see the Ermita de San Bartolomé, a late Romanesque church from the 13th century. It's said to have been built on an earlier Templar church in the 11th century and was the center for the military order of holy knights who defended the Soria branch of the Camino Santiago. Local tradition says the mystical Santiago (St. James) himself appeared and threw his sword into the canyon, declaring that wherever it landed a church should be built for the Templars.