A pleasure to have a sleep in, up by 0600AM and eating breakfast at a local bar by 0700AM. The place was full of male patrons when we arrived and they were in high spirits and all 20 men talking loudly. Within 3 minutes of our arrival the patrons numbered 5. Walking by 7:30 we were gifted a magnificent sunrise as we climbed a steep hill and onward to the trail. This was a perfect walk. A good track being a one lane dirt road winding through a scattered forest, and again we had flowers each side.
The few houses we passed were magnificent, clearly not a poor neighbourhood. Onward we walked through many secured gates despite the road trail being independently fenced from other paddocks. It was a beautiful and peaceful place to be with wonderful vistas in all directions. In the paddocks were livestock, mainly sheep, but also goat, pig, cattle and chickens. A welcome change to see livestock. A farmer chatted to us about his sheep, his goats, the pigs, the drought, our walk, where we come from, where we were going tonight (Monesterio or Real de la Plata). He prattled on in Spanish, totally oblivious to whether we actually spoke Spanish or not. But we nodded and smiled and gave all the correct gestures and he was happy. Then we parted ways and he wished us well on our camino.
We again traversed some steep hills that didn’t seem bad really after the mother of all nightmares yesterday. The trail widened to a two car dirt road with minimal traffic. We passed a lovely German pilgrim Hannah resting under a tree, and later saw another pilgrim on a grassy area in the open spaces in his sleeping bag reading his book. He was very contented, greeted us warmly and said he was waiting for the sun to rise before he did likewise. We saw neither pilgrim again all day.
Finally we climbed another hill thinking it preceded the bigger one closer to town. It hardly warranted a mention despite a modest climb and gradient, and so we braced ourselves for what lay ahead! We were almost in shock when, looking over the top of the hill, there below lay our village. We had arrived without even realising.
It was barely more than a 14km day and it was perfect in every respect. Our accommodation is very nice and our host is a delight making every effort to help us.
Washing done we took off for a walk, and saw an old castle on top of the regional highest hill. You would think that at the end of a day of walking with a heavy backpack, the least appealing thing would be to go back outside, in the hottest part of the day, and walk another couple of kilometres to explore an old castle. But of course that is exactly what we did. And as we did so we noticed the streets were deserted and thought of the old saying "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." Ummm...
An amazing job has been done to restore the castle, back in the 1990s, and now it has been repurposed into an amphitheatre. Very impressive. Was thinking though, if the Spaniards built it to defeat or protect against Portuguese invasion (which apparently is the case), wouldn’t that mean the Spaniards would be in a castle with no water supply and the Portuguese have free reign on the district? My military mind isn’t in synch.
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