May 25, 2013

To sum up today – hot!

We were up early for a quick getaway, which turned out to be not as quick as we wanted because we had to try to remove a thick layer of fluff from absolutely everything. Still, we do make pretty good time and we find a cycle track that leads us to the road we want out of Plasencia. It’s already fairly warm – fortunately we have plenty of fluids with us as we find ourselves on a road far from signs of civilization. The only living things we see are a few herds of cattle in the distance and lots of birds of prey, vultures, eagles and kites, all circling overhead at regular intervals. We’re in the middle part of Spain that seems to be endless scrub from horizon to horizon covered with a shimmering heat haze. You get the feeling that if the bike broke down someone would find the bike with just a pile of bones at the side of it, picked clean by the vultures.  We still see quite a few cyclists going the opposite way along the ‘camino’ but nobody going our way (the wrong way). The cycling is not difficult – an undulating road to start with and then steady climbing, but we do feel the effects of the heat. This has been a trip of extremes of weather.

When we stop for a drink we look back and see the snow-covered mountains behind us on the horizon shimmering through the heat – amazing that we can still see them so many kilometres away.

We are fortunate when we arrive in Caceres that the camp-site is sign-posted from the outskirts of the city as we really did not fancy another long search at the end of a hot day. The camp-site is the most expensive yet – I did a double take when the girl on reception asked me for €25 for one night’s camping. We get charged the same for our little tent and two bikes as the enormous Winnebago type camping cars that are rolling in – doesn’t seem fair but we’re not going any further at this stage so we pay up.