Yesterday, when it was a bit cooler, we went shopping in the village. Fortunately, the supermarkets here are generally open until about 9 o'clock, but usually close between 2 and 5. The shop is as small as the village is small. It's the kind of shop you could just find in the 1980s in rural Limburg. With one employee that goes from the meat counter, to the cheese counter and then from the vegetables to the check-out. She teaches us every Spanish word of every product we pick up and also lets us know if it tastes good and whether it contains sugar or not. Now that's service! And a fun shopping experience. Last night we enjoyed the sunset with brilliant red clouds over the hills. And the saying proved correct: sunset red brings water to the ditch. This morning it's overcast and further up the hills we see rain falling from the clouds. It seems to evaporate before it reaches the ground. But as we walk through the village, it start to drip quite a bit. Just enough to put the rain cover on Malou's backpack. Soon after leaving the village, the yellow marked route is different from the one on the map. It leaves the road and, looking at the map, we can estimate how it continues, so we take it. That saves us a bit of hiking along the road. But as often happens when the route is diverted, we have to climb a lot more.
We walk along a dirt road past houses just outside the village. We've seen this so many times by now, and it works fine, but still we're surprised to see dirt roads with rain-worn gullies in between the houses.
We walk up a ridge, the Sierras de Cañaveral, with 860 meters as its highest point. We cross a pass of just over 500 meters, so we stay a little lower. By now it's dry again and we have magnificent views of the plain we have just come from. The ridge we are now on turns east into Monfragüe National Park, a mountainous nature reserve slightly off the route, but which we'll visit later. Here you can see that the hills get a bit more moisture than the plains. There is lush vegetation of green grass, shrubs, fields of lavender and other flowers, and we even walk through a forest. That's a long time ago!
Over the hill on the other side, we walk through gently sloping wide forests of cork oaks with green grass on the ground. After following the route on the map for a while, we head off again for a bit here. We follow a path parallel to the route, but a bit further from the main road. It's wonderfully quiet and we enjoy all the bird sounds around us. Occasionally a stork or a vulture flies by on the open stretches. The further we move away from the hills, the drier and more open the landscape becomes again, but more often we cross a stream or walk along a small lake or pool of water. In those places, nature immediately makes eager use of it and it's brilliantly green. It seems like very day we see another animal or creature, plant or flower that we don't know yet. That's what makes hiking with today's technology so special. You can see them, from big to small, photograph them and look for them while walking. But today really is a top day. Today's harvest: we see a star clover with the beautiful star-shaped flowers on a long stalk, we follow a ladder snake through the bushes, a non-poisonous snake that can get up to 160 cm long but this one was about 40 centimeters, and a fire spider, a small spider with a red back with a black stripe from the jumping spider family, crawls through the bushes. It really does it's name justice, because when we try to pick it up, it jumps away quickly. We see a marshy patch full of sole orchids, brilliantly purple in full bloom, and during a break under an old oak tree we are joined by a red-headed shrike. Everytime it flies from the same branch to the same bush and via another tree back to us. These little birds come here in summer to breed and then fly back to Africa to spend the winter. The cute little bird is clearly twittering loudly exploring its territory. Or well, cute... its Latin name is Lanius Senator. Lanius means 'executioner' and that gives some idea of how he handles his prey, large insects, small mice or other birds. He likes to spear them on twigs before eating them. Hmm, that makes you look a bit differently at such a little bird, but it's still a beautiful animal!
After the break, it's just a short walk to the village. We walk through the meadows until we turn off about 4 kilometers before the end of the route to walk towards Riolobos. There's another campsite there and fortunately it isn't full despite the holiday weekend (Monday is May 1st). It's another beautiful stretch with nice views over a new part of the Spanish plateau. In the distance we can already see the higher-lying sierra de Gredos and sierra de Francia with peaks rising above 2,500 metres, and Plasencia in front of them. And in the plain we see brilliant old bridges that seem to come straight out of a Harry Potter film. But no train crosses it here, it's an aqueduct over which a wide canal flows. We cross the canal just before we reach the village. There's still enough water in here to supply the farmlands on this side of the river Alagón. Even though the village is only small, there are at least four supermarkets. But on Saturdays after 2 am, they are all closed, and unfortunately it's already almost 4.30 pm. After a walk through the village, we head to the campsite where we get a nice pitch in the shade of plane trees and the beautifully flowering, and fragrant Indian lilac. The friendly campsite owner confirms that no shops will be open in the village today, tomorrow or the day after. But before we know it, she has already called a taxi and Malou can go shopping kilometers away for the next few days. Thank goodness, because we've completely run out of food and the water from the tap is fine for making coffee or tea, but this way it tastes like pool water. I set up the tent and after an hour we sit comfortably on our chairs in front of our little tent, with provisions for the next few days, because the shops won't be open again until Tuesday...
