Roman ruins

I thing

Crossing the Tajo

I wonder what it was like before the reservoir.

Alcantara

The pilgrim hostal by the reservoir is a strange creation. A gargantuan square pile of concrete, it does indeed look like it was dropped here from Mars, as one of the my fellow pilgrims remarked.

Of course it's not helped by the fact the landscape of the reservoir itself has an alien feel to it. Submerged valleys that were never lakes appear odd to the human eye, as the natural form of the landscape is inverted. And it's worse when the reservoir is half full, leaving a dead section of ground exposed above the water line.

However, despite all that the hostal is extremely comfortable, and the breakfast is marvellous (the only question mark is over the pre-made coffee that needs to be heated up in the microwave...)

Today I'm off to the bright lights of the big town of Caceres, 30 km from here. Once again it's overcast, and fresh. I'm being ridiculously lucky with the weather for walking. Long may it continue, although at this rate I'll arrive in Tarifa with a tan like I've spent the summer in Scotland.

PS That's No-Name, the resident dog, in the photo. He turned up here one day, blind in one eye and limping, probably as a result of a beating from his owner. He's been adopted by the pilgrims, and now lives here. He's very friendly, although still very nervous, unsurprisingly after what's happened to him. Last night, when the pilgrims had all gone to bed I was sitting outside looking up at the stars and he came and lay next to me in a very peaceful, companionable way. His trick worked of course, as this morning a fair few bits of breakfast ended up finding their way to him.

The tower of Grimaldo

Where the lord of the town used to invite unsuspecting pilgrims in for food and a bed for the night, but then kill them as they slept, in order to rob them.

Since the move to the new pilgrim hostal just down the road things have improved apparently.

Waltraud and Albert

I finally arrived at Alcantara Hostal just as a crimson sun disappeared over the horizon.

The hostal lies on the shores of a huge reservoir, created from the damming of the Tajo, one of Spain's great rivers, that rises far to the east.  Descending to the hostal the views of the sunset over the reservoir were spectacular.

Once at the Hostal I was looking forward to a good dinner, and for once I'd phoned ahead to confirm my arrival. You can imagine my disappointment when the pilgrims-in-residence, including Waltraud and Albert, pictured above, informed me that the warden was off, and nothing had been left out. A dinner of peanuts was on the cards.

I gave the number I'd called earlier a quick ring to see if maybe they'd hidden a steak somewhere for me, and before I knew it someone had been despatched to come and sort out food for me. Excellent service, and although I felt bad, the cheery warden who arrived assured me that, "this was nothing", and that people sometimes turned up at 2 in the morning, and this was what he's here for. My conscience now completely clear despite having dragged him out of his house some 30km distant I was then able to tuck into my pizza, which was excellent.

Albert was also delighted with the arrival of the warden as it allowed him to acquire another cheeky beer, the stash he'd put together before the warden had left having run out on him.

Embalse de alcántara

N 630

As expected the next stage turned into a disaster that saw me thrashing about in prickly bushes having lost the path entirely. This was followed by a lot of climbing over and under and around barbed wire fences, all the time worrying about the nature of the cows in the fields I was attempting to cross. By nature I mean whether they were equipped with udders or not, the desperate hope being that they were.

The worst of all this was that for much of this time I could see the road I was heading for, but each time I got a little closer to it a new unclimbable  barbed wire fence would appear as if from nowhere and send me back off on a new detour.

I have however finally made it to the road, the ever present N630, which I seem to spend half my life on at the moment. To make up for all that pain I've arrived at its kilometre 500. The kilometres go up as the road wends its way south, next to the via de la plata.  I can't remember exactly where I first started walking on the N630 but I think it was around the low one hundred kilometre mark, so reaching 500 feels like progress. 

Frustration

It's been a painfully frustrating morning. The route from Galisteo passes through farmland divided into many plots, with an interminable numbers of farm tracks between them, and which are further dissected by canals and irrigation channels. The route twists and turns along these tracks, but with so many junctions, gates and passes it's hard to be sure you're in the right place. I've followed several tracks that appeared to be correct only to end up in the middle of a field, with the path just petering out.   

Under a leaden drizzling sky the map, which is fairly useless at the best of times rapidly became sodden and even harder to read. There have been few yellow arrows, and those that did appear were mostly ambiguous.

In addition to the yellow arrows there are stones like the one in the photo, these are meant to mark the path of the old Roman road and the way to follow it as closely as possible. The problem is if you find one you can be certain you're on the path at that point, but in terms of working out where to go next they're more obscure.

The line on top of them is, as far as I can tell, meant to show where the route goes, but as you can see from the photo here if you follow the line you'd have to go straight through a barbed wire fence. Not entirely helpful.

So, yes, it's been excellent fun. The Spanish cows have picked up a few choice swearwords in English. 

Ah well, I've made it to a road where i'm pretty certain I'm where I should be.  The bad news is the path now goes back to farm tracks for another 12 km, which look even more horrendous than what I've already done this morning.

This could get very entertaining...

Grey skies

As the locals promised it's cloudy today and there are even a few spots of rain drizzling down. Not spanish summer weather at all, but good for walking.