The day and a half we spent exploring Salamanca confirms: Salamanca is in a class of its own. The city is pleasantly busy, but not overcrowded with hordes of tourists. There are SO many beautiful old buildings, but it doesn't feel like an open-air museum. In the centre and towards the suburbs there are many shops, but we hardly saw any big chains. If you just walk through the centre, you already see so much beauty. The authentic streets, the Plaza Mayor, the churches and no less than two cathedrals and nice little parks and squares everywhere. But what we like best is to peek around a corner to see what we find just outside the centre. That's how we ended up at Cueva de Salamanca. A crypt under a church that is no longer there, where devils and demons were worshipped and dark knowledge was passed on. Unfortunately, the tower from which you would have a nice view was closed, but it's a separate piece of Spanish history. Almost directly opposite the crypt, we walked into the Salamanca Sedes Antiqua Castrorum. This is where several city walls converge and even the oldest, built under the leadership of Hannibal (yes, that general with the elephants), is still here. We spent almost an hour talking to the friendly lady at the museum about the history of Salamanca, Spain and our trip along the Via de la Plata.
By now, we are starting to get a pretty good idea of the history of the Iberian Peninsula through our trip northwards. And the nice thing is, places like this you can just walk into for free! And on terraces, even in popular places, you pay at most €1.50 for a cup of coffee, which is nice for coffee lovers like us. The big building decorated with the shells, turns out to be a library. And even though we don't understand Spanish, let alone read, it is a gem and well worth taking a quick look in the courtyard. The old card indexes with the books in alphabetical order, are still just there. There is something magical about the quiet when you walk inside, right in the middle of the busy city centre.
For us, Salamanca is the highlight of the Spanish cities in our trip so far. We would have liked to stay there a bit longer, but the north is calling, so this morning we packed our things anyway. We can take it super easy. It's a long stage to El Cubo de Tierra del Vino, but we'll smuggle 5 kilometers off of it, by camping just above Salamanca tonight, leaving some 31 kilometers for tomorrow. And this also allows us to head into town again this morning. At noon, we collect our stuff from our Star Wars-themed flat, eat a sandwich and then walk the five kilometers out of town. It's a long straight road past shops and businesses, past parks, flats and town houses until we cross a roundabout and are immediately back among the meadows. The route runs along a busy road, which we follow until we reach a motorway. We turn left and walk the last stretch to the campsite. Again, it's nice and quiet to spend the afternoon by our teepee, and it's great that we were able to make 31 kilometers out of 36 this way.
This morning we are up an hour later than intended. At a campsite, electricity is always a bit of a 'thingy'. We expected the phone, which is also our alarm clock, to last until this morning, but alas, it was completely empty. Fortunately, Malou does have a good biological clock, otherwise we probably wouldn't have woken up until 9 o'clock. But a little after 8.30 am, we nevertheless started the trek to El Cubo de Tierra del Vino. Looking at the route on the map, it's one long, straight line as soon as we turn off the paved road after a few hundred meters, onto a dirt road. It's a wide path of white sand over which the Spaniards mainly drive very large or very old cars. We walk among the open fields and can see a bit ahead each time, to where we'll be walking in a while. The fields here are mainly cereal fields as well, with grain of all kinds. Much has already been harvested, but some varieties are still green and fresh in the fields. After a good 10 kilometers, we cross the village of Calzada de Valdunciel. A small rural village concerned with pilgrims. A water point has been made in the middle of the village, connected to the drinking water network. On the other side of the village is a monument to the Via de la Plata. Seven little columns that until recently were used to cross a small river, by stepping over it from stone to stone. But luckily they have been saved from this practical use, as they turn out to be Roman milestones. Just a little too valuable to be used as bridges. Until kilometer 18 we walk a bit off the motorway, but then we see a large bridge looming. We decide tobtake a break before we get there, because for the second 18 kilometers we will be walking close to this road. That does sound a bit worse than it really is: after walking a short distance on the N-630 to cross a river, we can go under the bridge again to start walking on the familiar path. The route on our phone follows the N road all the way from here, so we're glad we don't have to follow this and can still walk unpaved. Kilometer after kilometer we have the motorway on our right, the white path in front of us and meadows on our left. The verges are bright yellow from the large-flowered gorse, many species of lupins and we see another one we didn't know yet: the Daisy-leaved Toadflax. A very fragile little flower from the plantain family. We take a quick break slightly off the motorway, near a few houses, farms and a church. A bridge has been built to reach the village, but by the looks of it this has only allowed residents to move away. Nothing seems to be inhabited anymore. If you ignore the motorway for a moment, it looks idyllic, but in a country this vast, there is not really a reason to keep living so close to such a busy road.
The last few kilometers go quickly, we keep going along one after another on a path just along the dirt road that runs a little better. The wide path is full of loose stones, and by now it's starting to get pretty heavy on the legs. So it's a relief when we see the village where we'll spend the night. We register at the inn and are then taken to one of the village houses. The inn has 3 houses in the village and 2 are now full. It's another one of those authentically decorated auberges where you have to share the bathroom with fellow pilgrims, but at least we can take a hot shower. We are pretty tired from the hike anyway and won't get out of our room (we do have our own room thankfully) much. Tonight we'll have some time to recover, and then the next 33 kilometers to Zamora!
