Day 9 Torremejia 15.04.23

A beautiful clear and cool day. In the distance to the east a mountain range is ringed at the base with heavy white cloud, just the mountain tops visible. There are two routes possible today, one faithfully following the Roman road, dead straight for over 20 km, the entire walk being close to 30 km. The other a detour passing halfway through a small town. The route via the town added a small distance but provided a possible water source and a decent comfort break. We are all too familiar with travel across the plains, broad expanses of crop and no trees. When privacy is sought, vast open spaces fail to address the situation. Hence we discussed and decided on the latter. Somehow though in spite of our efforts we did not find the alternative route and so embarked on the Roman way. It didn't faze us particularly.

This Roman road goes from the south of the country to the north, and despite my bleating about the hills, the cartography was both direct and avoided the mountains. The Roman roadway is so appropriate that to this day the rail, highway and walking tracks still take their direction. A couple of things stood out today. The road is a double lane dirt road with semi-frequent farm machinery and cars passing, so we needed stay upwind of the vehicles to minimise dust. The drivers were very considerate and passed slowly. After about 5 km from town the road became straight across the plain and infrequent rolling hills. But the road is bullet straight. That was quite something, but the most incredible observation was that for 25 km the fields on each side of the road were grape vines. I cannot imagine the cost to plant a small crop let alone one which continues over 25km continually. Every bush must be expensive, all the millions of stakes, the wire between stakes, the maintenance of the land beneath the vines. I imagine there are hundreds of farmers here and not a huge conglomerate. Everything looks to be local farmers.

We met another pilgrim, Wolfgang from Dusseldorf, a dentist with two weeks to do some camino trekking. With a Spanish father, a mother half French and half German, he could almost choose his preferred cultural identity. (But he was born in Germany.) Later we met with a French man but communication was impossible since his knowledge of English resembled mine for French. Still further along we met Eric, another German, a really nice man in his late 30s who has successfully developed a restaurant/bar and is now expanding with much bigger premises. We walked with Eric for some way until my calf injury caused renewed grief and Jenny and I dropped back to take a break. We slowed our pace and arrived at our destination somewhat later than intended, surprised to find Wolfgang arriving simultaneously at our hotel, along with another couple of pilgrims. The day was just beginning to get hot by 3:30 so our hotel was a welcome sight.

We later crossed the road to the regional bar (convenient location). No food for an hour and a half so we sat it out on a single drink, feeling too droopy to be bothered going anywhere while we waited. The locals were typically rowdy (and entertaining) as each of the ten drinkers tried to outdo each other in volume. (Ear piercing stuff. At least it made it impossible for us to drop off to sleep at our table.) An equally rowdy woman came over to make a toast with us. (What we were toasting will forever remain a mystery. None of them spoke English.) She was drinking straight whisky and poured some into Jenny's empty glass to ensure the toast could proceed. Jenny obliged.

Dinner (three course 'menu of the day') filled a gap but was very average. We were too tired to care. We dragged ourselves back to our hotel at the end of our meal and I really can’t remember the rest. I do remember the hotel was not what you would call five star luxury but at that stage nothing mattered, just grateful for a room, a hot shower and a bed after our long day.

Goodbye Villafranca - leaving in the morning, looking across from where we were staying

A long straight road, a bit like the Nullarbor only not as long