June 2nd ~ Hospital de Orbigo

Another day dawned bright and sunny. The dawn chorus we had anticipated, because of the many birds and the unusual woodland of Oaks, Sweet Chestnuts and Cherry trees, never materialised. Guilt set in about not seeing The Cidadela, and we returned to do it justice. The 13th Century Domus Municipalis, the pentagonal Romanesque civic building was disappointing, but enlivened by kids shouting to produce echoes. However, the Torre de Menagem was outstanding, with its 33 metre tower housing a military museum and an inner protective wall with 15 towers, which we walked.

After coffee, we drove the 200 km or so to our next planned camp. Unfortunately, there was only one sign out of Bragança for “Espanha”, and we took the main road in error rather than Jackie’s preferred scenic route to the Spanish border. However , She corrected the error by finding a good route across a huge plain, with numerous birds of prey, including Red Kites, Griffon Vultures , Hen Harriers, a Booted Eagle and others we could’nt identify. We stopped for lunch at Villardeciervos, when Chris had to stop the van for Jackie to take pics of a group of Red Kites ...no traffic so no problem.

On to several boring motorways until we reached Pobladura del Valle, a very odd place, with what we first thought were hillocks covered with a profusion of poppies. We then noticed that there were dozens of chimneys protruding amongst the poppies, implying a maze of underground houses ? – not in any guide books, so need to Google sometime. The first campsite we tried was closed, so on to the next, the small village Hospital de Orbigo, one of the stops on Caminos a Santiago, which runs from Castrilla y Leon to Santiago de Compostela, an ancient pilgrims route. Short thunderstorm cleared the air, with a fantastic rainbow afterwards, as the storm moved away.

After showering , we went for a walk round the village, noticing that they are preparing for a medieval jousting festival next weekend. This has been the story of our trip, missing festivals by a few days all the way up though Portugal. This was compensated by seeing a church with 4 storks nests, each with fledglings (see pic).We popped into 2 of the Auberges or refuges where walker s of the 687 km walk stay, who were very friendly and welcoming, and allowed us to use their internet service to catch up on e mails. Spent a nice relaxing evening on the campsite catching up with blog and pics and a lovely bottle of local Portuguese wine from the Douro valley!