Woke up several times in the night to hear to rain pouring down, which is not a happy sound, but I hoped it might mean the day would be better. Had breakfast with Don Blas Rodriguez, the parish priest who has done more than anybody to open the camino through this difficult patch. And then a few frankly dreary hours in low cloud and thin rain deeply regretting the fact that I’d somehow left my water-proof trousers 100 miles or so back. At the Pico de Duena, at a bit under 4000’ apparently one of the highest points in the camino, I was rewarded with panoramic 360° views stretching all of 300 yards into a cloud. Quite near the top I saw a large herd of black pigs who had demolished every acorn for acres, presumably gearing themselves up to become pata negra.
It didn’t get much better – at about 2pm I arrived in a village, full of hope, to find that the smoky bar did no food at all (very rare in Spain). A Formula 1 car race was just starting on the TV, and I carried on the next 3-4 miles to the next village, where the smoky bar did a little food, and where I found on the TV that various car drivers in Abu Dhabi had been driving around in circles 56 times and were near the end of their race.
Shortly afterwards I bumped into somebody with several eager dogs who’d been having a good day shooting rabbits – was surprised to learn that they have myxomatosis here too. By this time I was merely damp, rather than soaking wet, and the clouds had lifted a little, so I carried on in autumnal sunshine to Morille, a village 20km south of Salamanca. There I once again had sole possession of the albergue (where the sheets smelt of smoke) and had an early (for Spain) dinner in the smoky bar next door, where everybody had gone home at the end of a football match by about 9pm.
On Monday morning I left Morille just as the sun was rising over a very frosty landscape. No coffee, but a very bright crisp walk through more holm oaks for a couple of hours while the sun burned off the frost - at about 10 I saw Salamanca a long way in the distance. By 11 suddenly there were no more trees at all as the road got closer to Salamanca - very fertile land, with next year's winter wheat already germinating. Walked over the battleground of Salamanca - or of Los Arpiles as it's known here - where in 1812 Wellington, the Portuguese and Carlos of Spain defeated the French under Maréchal Marmont in one of the decisive battles of the Peninsular War (my great-great-great-grandfather Colin Campbell (1776-1847) fought with one of the highland regiments in the battle - he later had a horse shot under him at Waterloo).
After the battleground the city seemed to get no closer and the walk became very tedious through apparently endless dreary suburbs, when it all suddenly became worthwhile when the camino reached the Roman bridge over the rio Tormes, and what must be one of the most beautiful cityscapes in Europe came into view.
Dropped my rucksack in the local parador (at €60 a night pretty reasonable, even if still significantly more than the previous 4 nights combined) and walked on to Calzada de Valdunciel before getting a bus back.
On Monday morning I left Morille just as the sun was rising over a very frosty landscape. No coffee, but a very bright crisp walk through more holm oaks for a couple of hours while the sun burned off the frost - at about 10 I saw Salamanca a long way in the distance. By 11 suddenly there were no more trees at all as the road got closer to Salamanca - very fertile land, with next year's winter wheat already germinating. Walked over the battleground of Salamanca - or of Los Arpiles as it's known here - where in 1812 Wellington, the Portuguese and Carlos of Spain defeated the French under Maréchal Marmont in one of the decisive battles of the Peninsular War (my great-great-great-grandfather Colin Campbell (1776-1847) fought with one of the highland regiments in the battle - he later had a horse shot under him at Waterloo).
After the battleground the city seemed to get no closer and the walk became very tedious through apparently endless dreary suburbs, when it all suddenly became worthwhile when the camino reached the Roman bridge over the rio Tormes, and what must be one of the most beautiful cityscapes in Europe came into view.
Dropped my rucksack in the local parador (at €60 a night pretty reasonable, even if still significantly more than the previous 4 nights combined) and walked on to Calzada de Valdunciel before getting a bus back.
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