After our visit to Guarda, we were looking for a spot for the night, which we found next to the Caldeirão dam. By chance, we noticed that a hike starts here. We found some information in Portuguese, but didn’t understand much, only that the route is 12 km long, there are 600 metres height difference, […]
From Ciudad Rodrigo it was a short drive to the Portuguese border town Vilar Formoso. We noticed a museum called Fronteira da Paz, which had spiked our interest. We first thought, the museum would be about the history of the border to Spain, but instead it shone a light on a part of our recent
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Ciudad Rodrigo was originally a Celtic village under the name of Mirobriga. The town was later taken by the Romans during the conquest of Lusitania and named Augustobriga. In the 12th century, the site was repopulated by King Ferdinand II of León. He built the city wall and started the construction of the cathedral. In the
In the Las Batuecas – Sierra de Francia Nature Park, we had spent the night next to the river, where we wanted to hike the next day. (45.454102, -6.13465) From that parking, a route leads you up the Batuecas to the secluded Monastery Desierto de San José of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns and further upstream
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What is called Meandro el Melero are the horseshoe bends in the river Alagón, which makes its way through the mountains in the Las Batuecas – Sierra de Francia Natural Park. We saw photos of this landscape and decided to hike there. On Wikiloc we found a route we liked and off we went. (Trail
Driving down from Puerto de Honduras, we were relieved when we had left the burned down area. On this side of the mountains, not the cherry but the chestnuts dominated the vegetation. Just outside Hervás, we found a lovely spot for the night and to our surprise, a market with music, food and drinks was
As the heat wasn’t over jet, we spent two nights at the dam just north of Plasencia, before we made our way into town. Besides of some cows, we had the lake to ourselves, could go for a swim and relax in the shade of our car. But finally the temperatures had dropped a little,
We started our exploration of La Vera in the east, in the village of Madrigal de la Vera, where we stayed at the camping and explored the old Roman bridge and the pools along the river. Next we stopped at the Devil’s waterfall, just that the devil was on holiday and there was not much
From Calatrava Vieja we took a gravel road along the river, which didn’t carry any water at that time of the year. But the riverbank seemed very fertile. We saw olives, almonds, corn, wine and even pistachio trees growing there. The ripe grapes were very impressive. The dry river made us expect the worst for
On our way through Castile, we came across the name Calatrava. Beside of many villages with that name in it, there are two castles of the Calatrava Order: Calatrava la Nueva and Calatrava Vieja further north. The Order of Calatrava was one of the four Spanish military orders. It was founded in Castile in the 12th century, as a
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