Spain is divided into 17 autonomous regions and 2 autonomous cities, each of which has its own government and parliament. All these regions have their own rules and laws. We hope we won't have to deal with the legislators, but it's useful to know that the rules for wild camping are more generous than in previous regions we passed through. Here, it is allowed to pitch your tent for a night if it's not on private land and outside of the nature reserves. So, should it be necessary, it could be done, but if possible we still prefer camping or sleeping in an hostel. Today we start the first full stage through Castile and León. Two and a quarter times the size of the Netherlands, but with only 2.4 million inhabitants, almost 16 times more sparsely populated. So it will be some quiet hiking days, with most villages barely larger than where we spent the night last night, through lots of vast agricultural land and hopefully some forests. At least the village is quiet this morning. As we walk out the door, we hear the clapping of storks opposite us on the church tower. Each season has its own colour of flowers and we have gone from white to yellow and now fields of purple flowers. From thistles to the bindweed and vetch, they all colour the fields purple.
The road is muddy, rather than dusty and runs nicely. Today the sky is not bright blue as we are used to, but it's quite cloudy. The tops of the mountains around us are shrouded in grey clouds. Or actually their peaks, around here the mountains are already a lot lower and hillier than yesterday. Hope we keep it dry today... It's one long straight road up to Valverde de Valdelacasa some 8.5 kilometers away. We walk a bit further than the small village to take a break. The route will coninue with another stretch along a small road, so we walk up a small path away from the road to find a spot for the chairs. Or ehm, nowadays just one chair and an iso-mat, as one chair broke down recently. The stage so far has gone so fast, that we have to take a long break to avoid arriving at the auberge too early. But we have plenty to do, now that an order for new shoes isn't going quite as expected and we try in vain to make quite a few phone calls in Spanish. After the break the sky clears up again, though it fortunately remains a bit cooler than in recent days. We walk on an asphalt road, but a very nice one. We climb slowly to the next village, Valdelacasa. Along the way, we see some brightly coloured bee-eaters in the trees, an Algerian hourglass (a green lizard with a red head) and a purple orchid and blue and soft pink lupines. And again, lots of yellow flowering gorse. It's really a stunning stretch. On the other side of the village, the trail climbs for a while and we pass a large open pit mine. It turns out to be a tungsten mine.
Known from the light bulb, but it's also widely used in industry. For this, a pretty big hill is excavated, and as far as we can see it's just about the last hill of our tour today. From here we really look into the Spanish plateau. It's a vast flat stretch, with no hills on the other side and we will need quite a few stages to cross this plain. The final kilometers run flat between meadows. The beautiful Spanish cows here have plenty to drink from the pools of water in the fields. A nice contrast to their counterparts kilometers back, which lived on a lot drier ground. Mostly we can walk on paths, occasionally on the road and it isn't long before the houses of Fuenterroble de Salvatierra loom up. A village similar to where we left this morning, but in a much flatter landscape. An elderly lady sweeps the benches along the street, on the village terrace sit the by now familiar fellow hikers and around the corner, at the edge of the village, is our auberge, about 100 meters from the 'centre'. Another nice little centre, which we will walk through a little later today when we can get to the little Pilgrim shop, after half past six. Again a nice place for no doubt another good night's sleep!
