Plank Road: A Couple of Walks

We joined a Spanish walking group today for a walk in the Valley of the Mills, which commenced in Arroyomolinos, which translates as millstream. When we reached the parking area just prior to 9:00 a.m. there was nobody around and then suddenly a group of cars came driving up, they must have got together to car pool. They were very welcoming even though we could barely understand each other.

There were over 30 people in the group, which surprised us. Later on at a lunch break, a walker who could speak some English came up and explained that the group usually numbers around 50 walkers.

As there are various levels of fitness among the group, the line of walkers sort of strung out along the trail and temporary groups formed. Since John and I are of the insane Canadian mentality, we found the pace a bit slow so we walked with the group at the front.

The people were really kind to us, they tried to show us things and some of them were picking wild asparagus which they handed to us to try. The Spanish are into sharing food, at the lunch stop, they walk around and offer each other their snacks. We were offered figs, licorice, candy, peanuts, cashews, chocolate, we opted for a few nuts but declined the remainder.

There is a stream which runs along the length of the valley we walked. The Romans used the stream to turn mill stones to mill grain. The Moors perfected the system, a series of channels were built to direct the water, the water then dropped down to turn the mill stones. Everything then fell to ruin, a few of the mills have been restored and there are a few mill stones laying around.

At the end of the walk, which took about four hours, we expressed our thanks to the people we walked with and then took off for another walk, like we didn’t already have enough walking for the day.

The next walk we wanted to complete was just down the highway at the next town, called Alcuescar. We no longer shy away from negotiating narrow streets, it does not alarm us in the least any longer so in we go. We noticed that a lot of the streets are named after conquistadores. We couldn’t seem to find the parking area so we just parked where the walk ends and used our GPS to get to the start of the walk, this worked out very well.

This walk went up over a small mountain through olive groves and then into pine and oak woods. This particular area is loaded with more flowering plants than any other area we have walked, it also had a really pleasant scent due to the trees and plants.

The destination was an old Visigothic church, as there are very few Visigothic ruins in Spain, what there is, is generally in rural areas. The Visigoths re-used Roman stones to build the church, and before the Romans, it may have been a temple to a CelticIberian goddess. The Romans dedicated their temple to Ceres and Prosperpine.

The church has Visigothic horseshoe arches, which was the only reason it held any interest for us, but we could barely see inside to check out the horseshoe arches. There appears to be restoration work starting on the Visigothic church. We then had a road walk back to Alcuesca through cork oaks and olive groves, but we did not encounter a single car, the walk was approximately 9.5 km.

Large cork oak, cork is harvested every nine years