On our way from Segovia to Becerril del Carpio to meet up with Christina’s parent, John and Harriet Ross, we stopped at a small town called Baños de Cerrato, located a few kilometers south of Palencia. Some of the sights mentioned in the Lonely Planet sounded interesting, particularly the chance to see the oldest church still standing in Spain, which was built by Visigoths way back in 661.
On our way out of town, I snapped a picture of this massive stork’s nest built above the bell tower of the town’s current church. These stork nests are all over Spain and Morocco, and they are considered good luck for the town where they are built, meaning they are very desired and protected. Interestingly, the storks in both countries don’t really play religious favorites as for where they build their nests. We saw them on church towers and mosque minerets alike. As long as it was the on the tallest structure around, the storks didn’t care.
I’m still not sure how they keep from being blown off, but I’ll leave that question to someone else and just enjoy the majesty of the balance of the entire structure.