El Real de la Jara

I must confess right at the start to cheating a tiny bit today. The first half of the stage consists of walking 16kms on the shoulder of a rural highway, which didn’t really appeal to me especially as I always seem to injure myself walking too much on pavement.  So I arranged last night to share a taxi with two other pilgrims to where the camino leaves the highway and enters the Sierra Norte National Park (thanks to the camino forum members who suggested this!). 

They only trim the lower trunks of the cork trees

We set out of Castiblanco at 8:30am and started passing a steady stream of pilgrims slogging on the highway in single file. I bet some must have started by 6am to be so far along the road!  The three of us set out pretty much at our pace, leap-frogging a bit as one stopped for a break but I lost sight of the others after the 3rd hour.  It was glorious walking in the park: open forests of already-harvested cork trees, which I’d never seen before. It’s really surprising how thick the bark is and the trunk is skinned right up to about my arm’s reach, with the crown of the short tree looking very much akin to an oak. However, it didn’t remain cork-y for long as the rolling land started a determined ascent through pine forests to Cerro del Calvario (a site of both roman and prehistoric significance).

It doesn’t look bad here but it’s steep & treacherous downhill

A steep rocky descent led down to the town of Almaden but it just past noon and the walking felt good so I picked up a bun, tomato, ham and some more water at a corner shop and continued on my way. I had a slight ulterior motive for going on as well. There were well over 40 pilgrims in Castiblanco – typically there’s only 10-12 walking each day on this route, so there’s going to be a rush for beds at some point. By continuing on to Almaden I’ll not only put in an respectable 30kms today, I’ll have jumped ahead of the masses by one stage (one of my taxi mates stayed behind an extra day in C. so she knew there weren’t that many pilgrims ahead).

And so I walked out past Almaden’s bull ring and out into the country. Half a hour later I spied the perfect rock under a shady oak for a lovely picnic lunch. I aired out my tootsies and snacked on my sandwich while I watched a big pack of black Iberian pigs snuffling around a watering hole. Jamon Iberica, dry-cured Spanish ham, is world-famous for its flavor as the pigs eat only acorns, and voila! Here are said pigs!

I started on just past the pigs when the cacophony of barking dogs arrested my forward movement. I thought they were locked up but in Spain you never know… I looked back to see a big pilgrim striding my way so I waited for him to pass me (let him be their snack while I sneak past!) and found out it was one of my Belgian men! And not the one who almost fell in the river! His name is Christian and he had walked the full 29.2kms from C. and was going the further 16k to El Real de la Jara! He yelled at the dogs, chained of course, and we passed on. He kept a fast pace but I had switched to wearing my hiking sandals which were sooo comfortable I felt like I was walking on two big sponges, so I was up to the quick tempo and we ended up passing each other most of the afternoon. 

It was a stupendous afternoon – sunshine, cool breeze, rolling terrain, trees and pigs and trees and sheep. Poor Christian had a nagging cough and set all the little piglets scrambling in fright at one particular farm we passed. 🙂 I left him trailing behind when we reached a steady steep 1.7kms of ascent and I walked the final 7kms to town alone. That’s El Real in the photo above – can you see the castle in the background? I think I walk by it tomorrow, I wasn’t about to go trying to find it today!! 

I’m staying in a nice new albergue with a large roof terrace and only 4 beds in my little room! I gave Coughing Christian my lower bunk and will take the top bunk. He bought me a beer from the vending machine as a thank you, I just hope he doesn’t snore!!