Plank Road: The Sierra de Montanchez

We wanted a decent walk today so we drove into the countryside to walk up, across and down the Sierra de Montanchez. This is a low mountain by hiking standards, but it had a pretty good ascent that took about an hour. The total walk took us four hours, which included a lunch break.

There must be more cops in Spain than anywhere; at a roundabout out in the total sticks, where two minor highways meet, there was a herd of cops stopping every car. Of course we blank right out when they whip off something in Spanish, we respond with our usual no entiendo. The cops figure out immediately that we speak English and call over a cop who speaks English. They wanted our ‘documents’ so we handed over John’s International Driving License, and a good thing we got one, as it is required. They looked at it and then sent us on our way.

The variety of plant life and birds in Extremadura is somewhat astonishing. This is one of the major birding areas of Europe, with huge migrations coming through. A bit further north there is a protected park where a lot of birds of prey live. We hope to get up into that area soon. You literally cannot go anywhere without being accompanied by birdsong, Trujillo is loaded with birds, we hear them in the morning (along with some church bells) and all day long. In the country it is bird central.

Walking here is idyllic and the Sierra is covered in granite stone footpaths that go up and down the mountainsides, someone did a lot of work. There are also numerous dry stacked stone walls but they are not low walls like they are in Scotland, these walls are really high. They keep cattle and horses in and the odd mule.

There are a lot of dwellings out in the middle of nowhere as well and some fincas with livestock. The top of the mountain is amazingly flat and large, so much so that there are a few vineyards, olive groves and fig plantations. The olive groves are nothing like the huge groves in the Subbetica, where the trees are large and the large scale operations require tractors and carts. Here the small groves are on terraced hillsides and the harvest is carried down in the traditional manner with donkeys outfitted with panniers.

Another interesting aspect of this area is the specialization with regard to food items from the various towns. Some towns specialize in famous cheese that is exported all over the world, another town is known for figs, specializing in chocolate figs and yet another town is famous for Iberian ham, which are the cured, air-dried giant ham legs that we see everywhere, it is cut razor thin for eating. The pigs eat acorns that fall from all of the holm oak and cork oak trees that grow here.

We have been really lucky with the weather during our travels in Spain, but we are getting unsettled conditions now. Today we had sun and cloud but we are to get showers for the next several days. We have yet to complete our walking tour of Trujillo, and likely won’t get to it tomorrow as we plan on visiting Merida, the old Roman city of Emerita Augusta. Emerita Augusta was the Roman capital of Lusitania province. You can imagine what that entails, more Roman ruins - yeah.

Sierra de Montanchez