21st September, Via de la Plata, Day 3

To Galisteo

Another hot day meant another early start. At 6.30am (the one in the morning) I snuck out of the community centre, leaving the cyclists to get themselves organised for their day’s slog.

I didn’t bother with breakfast, preferring to get off as soon as possible and take advantage of the cool morning.

There were plenty of signs for much of the route, more often than not just a yellow arrow painted on a rock or whatever, but also more elaborate affairs:

Although these signs were good, I had been warned of misleading and missing waymarkings before Galisteo. A farmer objects to the right of way going through his land and does his level best to divert peregrinos via Rio Lobos….thereby adding another 5 – 6km to the day’s walk.

Some enterprising locals have capitalised on the diversion:

More evidence of Roman habitation became, er, more evident. Milarios – Roman Milestones appeared every now and then – 1000 paces apart. Sometimes their more modern counterparts are found planted next to the originals:

    The new and the old

Slowly but surely, the further north I walked, the landscape began to take on an greener hue. It was very gradual, A couple of days earlier the only greenery I saw was the salad on my plate. The tracks were still very hard and stony, playing merry-hell with the soles of my feet.

The sky was changing now, clouds were more frequent although it was still very hot.

I was really ready for coffee and a bite to eat but the couple of villages I passed through couldn’t offer any refreshment. It was a matter of finding a suitable spot to sit down and attack the now disintegrating Aldi fruity bars. The front porch of the (locked) Ermita Ntr. Senora de ‘La Argamasa’ fitted the bill perfectly. ‘Argamasa’ incidently, is Spanish for mortar (cement). Obviously when you think about it. Innit.

      

I won’t insult your intelligence by translating the text here, I’m sure you can all do that with ease. Ahem.

Anyway, half-an-hour of feet-uppedness certainly helped my feet and allowed me to cool off a little. Leaving the shade of my refuge wasn’t easy, when the sun was out the heat was uncomfortable at best – heaven knows what it would be like in the height of summer

The countryside was far more agricultural now, fields of all sorts of crops – sweetcorn, grapes, oranges, olives, chilli-peppers and more.

Hot stuff

On tarmac once again, route to Galisteo passed close to a solar panel site. These panels were quite clever, servo-driven so that when the sun was up and about, they were always perpendicular to the sun – thus they were able to capture the maximum possible level of solar energy from it’s source 93 million miles away. Spain seems to capitalise on it’s sunshine, these fields of solar panel were not uncommon – although I noticed that some weren’t steerable.

Solar panels on the road to Galisteo

By now the walled town of Galisteo was quite visible although it was still a couple of hours away:

Then it started to rain. Not much, but without doubt it was wet rain. As soon as the rain stopped the humidity soared making it extremely uncomfortable for around 30 minutes or so.

Anyway, onwards to Galisteo.

There was an albergue outside the walls, conveniently situated almost next-door to the Bar Los Imigrantes, purveyors of ice-cold beer and rather good cheese, tomato and bacon butties. Just what the doctor ordered.

Bar Los Imigrantes

My lack of good Spanish caused some panic. The bar staff had me understand that the albergue was closed and there wasn’t any alternative accommodation available. I had got it completely wrong – there was plenty of space in the albergue, much to the relief of me and Nico who had just arrived in town – very hot and pretty tired.

The albergue

I spent much of the late afternoon and early evening exploring the town. The walls were quite accessible and provided excellent views of the town and surrounding countryside.

Views of the town, plus the servo-operated church bell. Technology eh?

The next day’s target was Arco de Caparra, going via Carcaboso. The route incolved 10km of busy tarmac so the executive decision was taken to avoid this first part of the walk by using the bus or taxi. Bus transport is minimal in these out of the way places so the choice was to either phone for a taxi or walk. In my best Spanish I phoned the local taxi man. He had no English, I had even less Spanish. The phone call left me convinced the man couldn’t understand me and the taxi I tried to order for the 7am following morning just wasn’t going to arrive.

I slept heavily that night, waking up at 6.50am, just in time to hear the taxi man roll up. Perhaps my Spanish isn’t quite so unintelligible after all.

Total distance for the day: around 24km

20th September, Via de la Plata, Day 2

To Grimaldo

After the blisteringly hot day from Caceres to Embalse de Alcantara yesterday it was vital to be up and away early. Yesterday’s walk had been made more difficult because of footpath diversions, thus lengthening the already long route to 37km, and lack of food en-route. Oh, and a diminishing supply of water.

Leaving the albergue at around 6.30am was just about right, the air was cool enough to be able to get a move on and the burning sun hadn’t made it’s appearance….yet.

Leaving the albergue meant climbing a very steep and stony track for 250m, not nice first thing in the morning when your legs haven’t woken up!

Tarmac ensued. This was fine in that it helped speed progress – but it was a bit boring. Road bridges made crossing the wide Rio Tajo a quick and clean affair. The views improved as the sun (and temperature) rose. Approaching Canaveral and walking close to a huge reservoir, a ruined bridge, the Puente Mantible, came into view. I was taken aback to realise that the bridge had been built in Roman times, and although in ruins, was in quite remarkable condition.

Puente Mantible

The early departure from Embalse de Alcantara resulted in me missing the warden – I needed him to stamp my Credencial, a sort of Camino passport. Getting regular stamps in the Credencial proves to albergues en-route that you’re a bona-fide peregrino and are therefore entitled to the appropriate privileges.

To get round the problem I called into Canaveral ayuntamiento (town hall). A very smiley young lady directed me up to the council chamber where a rather official looking official grunted something foreign and stamped my Credencial with his sello (that’s foreign for ‘stamp’).

These ayuntamientos are often quite ornate, even this relatively plain building put our bland town halls to shame.

 

 

Canaveral Ayuntamiento

I was hoping for breakfast in Canaveral, a bit of a mooch around the town resulted in finding a small bar where coffee & breakfast were obtained for €2. Beer & wine were also available for those who felt the need – not me!

The Canaveral water tap for peregrinos

Leaving the town, the Camino passes Ermita Sancristobal, one of the many small churches that are found on the outskirts of towns on the route. I was hoping to be able to have a look inside some of these churches but there were all locked.

Ermita Sancristobal

I had been advised of a diversion from the main route, it was duff information that had me wandering around dead-end lanes. By now it was really hot and although I had plenty of water, it was tough going. Once again I found my day extended, probably by 5km. I was saved by my Garmin SatNav, loaded with European road maps, it successfully put me back on track after much faffing about.

A long, hot stretch of tarmac brought me to the village of Grimaldo, Pop: not many, Bars: two (one of which seemed closed), albergues: one….which was temporarily closed because of the ‘infestación’. Even with my limited understanding of the language I realised that I didn’t really want to sleep in a place with an infestación. I was to later discover that the place was suffering from a bad dose of bed bugs. Lovely.

The locked door of the brewery sponsored albergue. 648km to go.

The long walk in had me dreaming of egg & chips and other deliciously unhealthy dishes. Not much chance in Spain, eh? I entered the bar that was full of peregrinos, all eating and drinking most unhealthily – just what I needed. I ordered a jug of water, a beer, and a bowl of soup (selected by pointing at one of my fellow walker’s dinner). This was all quite wonderful – it was even more wonderful when, when I had cleared my plate, a plate of egg & chips appeared! Oh, and a bottle of red. I hadn’t said a word to anyone – the lady who was cook, barmaid, cleaner, waitress etc must have thought I looked in a bad way and needed extra food…brilliant!

 The wonderful ladies of Grimaldo

At 5pm the infestación man arrived, suited and masked to withstand a nuclear attack. I don’t know what he was using to zap the little blighters but it was so strong that the bar’s customers sitting outside had to move around 50 metres up the road – it was powerful stuff. After that I was quite pleased that my night wasn’t going to be spent inside the albergue. I’d have woken up dead.

This just left the little problem of finding somewhere to sleep for the night. The ladies of Grimaldo had a solution, not ideal, but a solution. The community centre floor (tiled, and VERY hard) was made available for those who needed it. A couple of cyclists rolled up quite late on, perhaps 10pm. They had been covering around 80 – 100km a day, not easy in such high temperatures.

I called back into the bar for a beer before bed. The cook / barmaid / waitress etc sat me down in front of an excellent meal of tuna salad followed by a white fish dish. This place was unbelievable! My bill for the entire stay at Grimaldo was around 20€, the sort of price that you would only dream of in UK.

It wasn’t a comfortable night as I didn’t have a sleeping mat, I ended up sleeping in my silk liner on a mattress of my sleeping bag containing my clothing….but at least it was a place to sleep.

Total distance for the day: around 25km.

Saturday 6th October, Fun in the Peak District

The first part of a busy day

If you’ve been paying attention you should remember that today was the day when I was going running with the Cheshire Tally-Ho! Hare & Hounds.

The venue was the Rose & Crown (Robinson’s), a fine pub tucked away in the hills close to Wildboarclough.

The Rose & Crown, Allgreave, with Steve – one of the trail-layers

I was rather worried about my lack of fitness and also the state of my dodgy knees. I had done some walking but very little running so far this year. With this in mind I determined to jog and walk the route, I was confident that I’d be able to get round if I took it easy.

I left the pub in the company of Ding Dong Bell, Whitworth, Fast Shipley, and Club President Park. I’ve run from this venue before and each time the route has headed north and dropped down to a muddy and very wet Clough Brook. Hopes of keeping clean and dry were dashed within a very short time, Clough Brook was as bad as ever. Oh well. 

In theory the club operates a ‘pack’ system of running: the pack sticks together for all but the last 2 miles of the run – this is the responsibility of the whip.

President Park splodging up towards Shutlingsloe

True to form, within a couple of miles of the start of the run our pack split into 3 groups: Whitworth & Park leading, me in the middle, with Ding Dong Bell and Fast Shipley bringing up the rear. I was quite happy with this, I didn’t want to hold anyone back because of my slow pace.

Sawdust Trail

Trundling off on my own I had to concentrate on following the sawdust trail, there isn’t another pair of eyes to look for you – miss a lump of trail and you could easily get quite lost. Fortunately the day was clear and the trail was well laid, I stayed on trail for the entire route.

Entering Macclesfield Forest

The Leathers Smithy pub on t’other side of Ridgegate Reservoir

Some stream crossings are cleaner than others….

Some of our route coincided with the Gritstone Trail

 

Coos in Derbyshire?

The heavy rainfall of the last few months had left the Peak District a little, er, soggy. Running with Tally-Ho! is never a clean experience, but today’s trail was muddier than most.

Running with Tally-Ho! can be a messy business

Sting in the tail, the last 400 metres may have been on tarmac but it wasn’t flat

A water-trough on the final run in presented at the right time to clean muddy feet

I arrived back at the pub at around 3.30pm feeling remarkably good. My knees didn’t ache and I certainly wasn’t tired. I’d been out around 2 1/2 hours, certainly not the fastest time of the day for a 9.6 mile run, but I was more than pleased. Just a couple of days ago I was doubting if I could run even half of the route.

Geoff, Mark, and Steve, just back from their run

The pub’s facilities were good: a hot shower and a place to change. Dinner was more than adequate: home made meat & potato pie with peas, followed by apple strudel for afters.

Post-run shoes

The day’s route 

Around 20 runners were out today, not a bad turn-out for a small club. A good route with plenty of variety, and a decent pub at the end of it.

The second part of a busy day – another ceilidh

Freaks in the Peaks are a group of dancers whose interest in dance is predominantly in Border Morris but also encompasses all manner of other traditions and styles: British, European – no holds barred. Every few months the group meet of for a weekend of dancing and fun. These gatherings are often held in the Peak District.

This weekend was the Youlgrave meet. The group descended on the village hall, using it as a base for the whole weekend, sleeping in it, cooking and eating their meals there, rehearsing their dances – and generally socialising.

I left Allgreave and drove over to Youlgrave in the early evening, the sunset was staggering:

Saturday night sees a communal meal followed by music and dancing. This is where I came in.

I arrived just in time to join the group for their evening meal. Although I had eaten at Tally-Ho! earlier, I just had a very light snack – it would have been rude not to!

After the tables were cleared, the dancing began. The band consisted of any musicians who wanted to play. Tonight’s band had me on melodeon, plus others playing melodeons, a fiddler, a piano, banjo, accordions…along with others too.

Freaks at dance

It was around 11pm when I left for home. I would have preferred to stay over but I needed to get back.  It was 1am when I got to bed….a bit pooped! I was planning to return to Youlgrave the following morning but family responsibilities got in the way. Oh well, next time!

Friday 5th October, A Birthday Ceilidh in Goostrey

Playing for birthday ceilidhs is great fun – everyone is there to enjoy themselves, especially the birthday girl or boy.
Tonight’s ceilidh was no exception, a lovely smiley birthday girl who had lots of nice friends – all determined to have a good time. Held in the village hall in Goostrey, not far from Holmes Chapel.
Playing with the Midgebite Ceildh Band is always a pleasure – we just have lots of fun, and I like to think that if the band is enjoying themselves then our enthusiasm infects our audience. Fun escalates: we enjoy ourselves > the audience enjoy themselves > we get positive feedback and so enjoy ourselves all the more….etc.  Not that this audience needed any more enthusiasm – they were seriously up for it!
I often worry about the future of folk music and dance, our modern ways of life seem to almost obliterate these traditions. It is something of a relief to see younger dancers enjoying themselves so much. I don’t know whether these youngsters had been previously exposed to e-ceilidh (English Ceilidh) but they really threw themselves into the evenings activities with energy that embarrassed much of the adult audience!

  Our audience having a ball

 

John (JW), plays things with strings

Emma, our demon fiddler, giving it some stick

Bill, our rather excellent drummer

The Midgies in action…with some bloke on a melodeon

 Our caller, Brian, with a smiley, happy….and rather tired birthday girl!

First day’s walk on the Via de la Plata

At 6.10am (the one in the morning) I left the albergue in the darkness of a cool morning. There was some road traffic but not a great deal. Passing the city’s bullring and heading north, the next 10km was predominantly tarmac although eventually it was possible to leave the road and follow a traffic-free footpath.

The sun rose at around 7.45am and I knew it was only a matter of time before the temperature would rocket.

Sunrise en-route from Caceres to Casar de Caceres

At 8.30am I rolled into Casar de Caceres hoping for coffee and breakfast. The pleasant village seemed to be mainly asleep – the cafes I passed were all closed. What to do? I knew it would be another 25km before there was any chance of refreshment. I was carrying 2 litres of water and a few muesli bars (Aldi’s best!), I was well fed after the previous evening’s excellent dinner….. not much choice really – go for it.

The route was now nearly all footpath or farm tracks. The ground was extremely hard and quite stony, bruising the soles of my feet through the thick Vibram soles of my Meindl walking shoes.

The heat got hotter, the ground seemed even harder on my feet and the route was actually further than I expected. The way had been diverted quite significantly to avoid works being carried out by the local water company and also road builders, it probably added a couple of km on to the already long route. Oh well.

Around 2.30pm I spotted a welcome sign directing me to the albergue. This was VERY welcome, I was running low on water and I was getting hungry (nowt new there then) – after all, I hadn’t eaten since 9pm the previous evening.

 

Albergue – 250 metres

The albergue at Embalse de Alcantara looked more like something from the Cold War than a hostel. In fact it was wonderfully comfortable. Within minutes of walking through the door I was sat down eating an excellent lunch of tuna salad and tortilla, all washed down with cold beer.

Albergue at Embalse de Alcantara

The ‘warden’ did my laundry for a ridiculously small fee. After a shower and an hour’s feet-up rest I felt more human and was able to struggle to converse with my fellow peregrinos, notably Ully (Ulrich) from Germany.

Ully had started his walk in 40degC heat in Seville. His girlfriend tripped and fell early on, dislocating a shoulder – she was now out of action, recovering in Majorca in a nice hotel. She had insisted that Ully continue alone. I could tell he wasn’t overly happy about doing the trip without his lady. Having said that, he was grateful for the shelter and hospitality offered by the albergue – I was too!

An evening meal of pizza and salad, washed down with yet more beer hit the spot. I crawled into bed around 10pm, clean and well fed. It had been a good first day.

Total distance for the day: 37km. Too far.

18th – 28th September, The Via de la Plata

In the beginning….

Arca de Caparra 

The Via de la Plata (The Silver Way) or Ruta de la Plata (Silver Route) is a Camino starting from Seville and going north and north-west for 1000km to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain. It’s generally accepted that it takes around 7 weeks to walk the entire route.

The route, which is Roman in origin, was more recently used by Christian pilgrims. Today, whilst the route is still used by pilgrims (or ‘peregrinos’), it has become a popular long distance walking or cycling route.

My Plan (?!) was to walk the entire route over 3-4 trips, starting in Seville. I had difficulty in getting a sensibly-priced flight to Seville so changed my plan to fly from Manchester to Madrid (easy and cheap), picking up a hire-car in Madrid and driving to Caceres, a good 10 –12 days further north than Seville.

I have recently discovered that Seville holds the record for the hottest city in Europe with a record of 50° C (122° F). Being a bit of a wuss when it comes to walking in high temperatures this suited me fine.

To the trip!

I collected the car from Europcar at Madrid’s airport and aimed it at Caceres, stopping overnight at Talavera en-route at the Hostal Cuatro Caminos (Four Ways Hostel): cheap, cheerful, comfortable….and clean. Dropping the car off at the Europcar depot in Caceres I set off to explore the small city and to locate the albergue – a shelter or hostel for peregrinos.

Albergue Las Veletas is a comfortable hostel offering accommodation for 40+ at budget prices. 

Albergue Las Veletas, Caceres

A monk ringing a bell, warning of the approach of a sinner

Plaza Mayor, Caceres.

An evening explore of Caceres culminated in an excellent meal at an outdoor restaurant, 12€ for a 3 course meal plus a bottle of very drinkable red, not a bad deal – even for a beer drinker like me.

 Dinner in Caceres

Cute doggy in Caceres – after my dinner!

Back at the albergue it was a matter of filling my Platy with water and putting it into the fridge – then getting some much needed sleep. Next morning was due to be a fairly early start in order to avoid the heat of the day.