We woke up in Zafra Van Gogh hostel. The rain had continued through the night and the morning was cloudy and cold by Andalucian standards. We went down for our communal breakfast included in the 12 euro price, a meagre offering of a supermarket plastic wrapped croissant and some dry toast things with nasty margarine and jam, a tiny orange drink and an even smaller coffee. I steered clear of the horrid morning snacks and we all decided to shake the Camino up a bit and jump on a bus for a rest and a day out. We headed to the bus station in our raincoats with no particular plan and bought tickets for 10 euros each to Caceres, a pretty town 2 hours up the road.

We would have a day out and work things out from there. Everyone enjoyed being on a bus for a change and read books or researched Caceres and what it had to offer. The town (population 96,000) is the second largest in Extramadura and has a beautiful old town, Founded by the Romans in the first century BC, Caceres was a prosperous town until the decline of the Roman Empire. The Muslims built the city walls in the 5^th century, establishing Caceres as a military base, before it fell in to the hands of the Christians soon after. The historic buildings of this ancient walled city therefore take its visitors on a journey through it’s past, from the Moorish architecture of the Torre Bujaco to the Romanesque and Gothic influenced Cathedral Santa Maria and the Church of St. James himself. We were welcomed to look around the cathedral for free as we were pilgrims! The accommodation in Caceres was not cheap, even the town’s hostel was 15 euros a bed, but there was a little municipal albergue 11km away in the village of Cazar de Caceres, on the Camino and charging just5 euros a head so we opted for a morning and early afternoon seeing the sights of Caceres, before taking a 3 hours walk to this next village.

Casar de Caceres was quite a lively little suburb / village in it’s own right, with an outdoor pool, bars, restaurants and shops. The municipal albergue in the centre of town was in an old building on a plaza with balconies and a couple of dorms, as well as a shared kitchen and dining area. They generously provided a free washing machine and drier so we took advantage and loaded most of our clothes in. The showers were hot and good, though the lights flickered wildly in a fit inducing manner. It was cerveza o’clock so we took to the square, catching the last rays of sun at the friendly village bar. Having jumped about 140 km ahead there was a new bunch of unknown pilgrims about, some of whom had obviously been at the bar for some time! Noisy and merry they said their hellos and a few good natured Brexit jokes were thrown about…. We’re are trying to keep laughing through our tears! 🙂

We held a ‘What the hell are we doing in Caceres?’ meeting in an attempt to decide what we wanted to do next…. We had headed here with talk of maybe then being able to walk up to Salamanca before taking a train to catch our Wednesday flight back to Madrid (just 9 days away!) This had seemed a smart idea this morning but perhaps we had been influenced by our blind panic to escape the rain and the Caceres bus being the first one to depart! We checked out the weather in Salamanca and discovered the weather was colder, quite a few degrees lower, with more rain. Perhaps we had been hasty! We would return, back to Merida, which was just a couple of days walk on from Zafra. We would only have missed a couple of stages of the via de la Plata. The weather back there was forecast to be sunny for the next few days and it would be good to see Merida, a city famed for it’s Roman arctitechture. We had enjoyed our bus trip and day out in Caceres and it would be easy to jump on a bus back to Merida in the morning. We could walk back up to Caceres over the next 6 or 7 days and take the train from here back to Madrid on Monday or Tuesday. The new plan was formed!

We popped up to the local Dia and bought the ingredients to make another delicious chickpea and spinach curry and a bottle of wine and headed back to cook. There was so much curry and we shared it amongst some of the new characters we met in the shared dining area. There was a Russian girl who was walking huge distances each day, like 40 or even 50 km. There was a guy from Brighton, a very intense chap who was taking some time out from teaching and had been living in Spain for some time. Then there was an American couple – she had dazzling leopard print ‘jamas and he was a larger than life Democrat politician by the name of David McDevitt, who had recently run for U.S congress An unusual mix of characters but we were all unified by our love for Camino and our love for Barbara’s chickpea and spinach curry! By 10pm it was time for bed and we happily headed off to our lower bunks, leaving just our Brighton pilgrim to finish his super strong lagers!