April 20th
Kilometer 1.108,5
Last night we slept in Villafranca de los Barros in an old town house. Our room had no windows, so unfortunately we had no daylight yesterday. After being outside all day, and actually preferring to camp in our tent, such a dark room is a bit of a gulp. But we did find out the big advantage of that kind of rooms: the thick walls make it really incredibly cool. It's been a long time since I sat in a hotel room wearing socks and a cardigan! It was really nice for a change though, and ideal for a good night's sleep.
So we set off rested again and walk out of the town by 8 o'clock. Another formidable sunrise as we walk among the farmlands. That really is the advantage of this time of year when the sun rises around 8, in a while we will have to get up a lot earlier to enjoy this golden hour. It's still quiet and cool, so we keep a good pace for the first few hours. However, the scenery is too beautiful not to stop every so often to take a photo. Just outside the town, we pass some animals in pastures. Horses are grazing around on long lines, and further on, some cows are waking up. Once we have passed the animals and the first olive trees, we walk for kilometers past grape fields. Eventually, this turns out to be almost as far as Torremeija, the town where we spend the night 25 kilometers away.
One field after another, old bushes, young plantings, high trunks, low trunks, beautifully trained bushes and wild growing creepers... we pass each variation. The perfectly symmetrically planted rows have an almost hypnotic effect as you walk past them. From a distance, the fields look like a mishmash, but as you get closer, you see that they are planted in every direction, perfectly lined up. Craftsmanship! Yes, you get a feel for it after so many kilometers....
The grapes here are not on slopes like by the rivers further north in Europe, but on a vast plain. We are still in the province of Badejoz, and this is the flattest part of it. It's a large plain, sloping slightly from about 430 to about 330 meters above sea level. Just a bit higher than the Vaalser Berg in the Netherlands. But where that is the high point over there, we are here at the lowest point. In the distance towards the east and northeast the plain is surrounded by sierras. In the south we see the mountains to the south and west of Zafra and to the north, apart from a few lonely mountains, it remains flat for kilometers until a bit after Merida. The flat area is called Tierra de Barros, which translated means 'Land of Mud'. With its large patches of clayey red earth, this must be a very appropriate name when it has rained, although the land is now gort dry. But we do reach a small river at one point. It's been a long time since we've seen running water, especially here in Extremadura. Most of the gullies are dry, or at most there are some puddles of water in them. The river's edge is a nice place for a break. There's no shafow so we sit the sun, but that doesn't matter as it's still nice and cool. By the time we get up to continue our stage, it does start to get quite warm again.
Because of the fertile soil here, we also see new flowers along the paths. Lots of blue Italian ox-tongues and another one with such a brilliant name: the Narbonne star-of-Bethlehem from the asparagus family, better known in Dutch as 'bird's milk'. Because of the many flowers, we also see many butterflies for the first time, white, brown and also a swallowtail. Towards the end of the long, long paths between the grape fields, we take an extended break in the shade of a large tree during the last 4 kilometers. We can't check-in at the hotel until late, so we take it easy. The last stretch to the village is scorching hot again and, at over 27 kilometers, it's not a short stage. So we're glad when the hotel owner explains us in fluent Spanish with the accompanying fast pace how to precisely lock the outside door and fence from the inside, has copied our passports and handed over the key to the room, so we can drop off our backpacks. The past few stages have been fairly flat and not very long, but our bodies are starting to notice that we have walked for another 4 days, making 8 stages in 9 days. A short one tomorrow, then a day of rest and sightseeing in Merida. But first it's time for an ice cream! ;-)
