Greetings from Caceres

The Parador we stayed in in Zafra was wonderful. Long stone corridors big open courtyards and that sense of Don Quixote echoing from the castle walls. We were reflecting on the ride today the effect of travelling across a country with all you have in the world packed into a small black bag. Given the rather complex lives we all lead, this kind of break makes for a real escape.

Flat lands

Anyway breakfast was uneventful, plenty of rolls this time and we set off through a rich countryside of long rolling hills, olive trees and vineyards with the colour of the landscape changing every mile.Today our route took us North with our final destination being Caceres, an ancient walled city and world heritage site in the central wine growing region of Spain. This first part of the day was a great ride, good tarmac and nothing else on the road, after 30 miles we stopped for a coffee in a sleepy village and them onto Merida, our half way point for lunch. We stopped in the town square for a lunch of Tapas, cheese, anchovies great sausage and lots of bread. My companions I have come to understand, are a bunch of Philistines, they didn't like the food, didn't like the price and I distinctly saw them keeping an eye out for McDonalds as we left the town over an old Roman bridge.

Being Storked

Never let it be said that the EU has lost its touch for funding pointless civil engineering projects. You see our road north continued along the N 630, a beautiful, wide, empty carefully maintained road on which we could happily ride five abreast as we didn't see a single car. Running in parallel to this road was a shiny new EU funded motorway on which we did see the occasional car but frankly, we wouldn't have got in anyone's way if we had cycled on that instead. Chris was muttering darkly about use of tax payers money under the watchful eyes of nesting storks as the rain began to fall.Rain jackets on and eyes out for a place to stop for tea.

We stopped for tea in the village of Torrequemada where Jeremy was delighted to discover they apparently served Green Tea. he spent most of the rest of the ride extolling the virtues of the health giving and life enhancing properties of this beverage to Harley who it has to be said, was looking increasingly board.

We got into Caceres about six thirty. In trepidation, no one had mentioned Graham's usual Day 3 crisis, but when he sped off through the town muttering something about trusting his own instincts rather than those damn computers, we knew it didn't bode well. The four of us got to the hotel, Graham wasn't there, but thankfully was in a good humour when he did arrive some minutes later having got directions from a nice young Spanish lady who apparently had taken a shine to this nice old man in lycra.

Anyway 106 miles (170km) and a modest 3000 ft of climbing

Keep you posted  

GPX files for today's route
Zafra to Merida
Marida to Caceres