Day 17 - Merida to National Park (18 miles)

I am lying amidst clumps of wild lavender set back, away from the Camino. The continuous drone of bees making the most of this harvest of purple has a soothing effect and I have dozed off more than once in the fading afternoon sun. I am still five miles from Alcuescar where I was intending to spend the night; it has been a slow day. But it has been slow because I have savoured it and not because of tiredness, and I intend to savour it still further.

My first two miles as I left the city were uninspiring but since I set out in the dark I didn’t have to face the reality of the Merida suburbs and the road walking it entailed. However, by the time I reached Lake Proserpina north of the city - originally a reservoir created by the Romans to supply Merida via the Milagros Aqueduct and with the Roman dam still intact - I was in the countryside and a beautiful sunrise had begun on the far side of the water. A narrow road and a long sandy track through woodland, shrub and long morning shadows saw me to my breakfast stop at Aljucen.

As I walked into the tiny village I bumped into Elke, a Belgium who we had spent time with in Merida. She mostly camps and only does a few miles a day. We breakfasted together in a small cafe and I agreed to spend some of the day walking with her; I was in no great rush. The route took us into a nature reserve and along a river where we found a spot to enjoy the view of the morning sun on the water and its accompanying blanket of white marsh flowers. A continuous chorus of frogs provided background noise as we sat soaking up the tranquility. I 

have enjoyed a lot of countryside since Seville but here, taking it all in, it was as if previously I had only bathed in nature but now I was immersed it. We walked further on dusty tracks through dry grass and massive boulder fields and stopped again, this time in the dappled shade of a cork tree. I lay there listening to the sounds around me: the distant clanging of a cattle bell; the rustling of the tree in the wind; the far off sound of a cuckoo and, above me, the distinctive song of some other bird which was rejoined in kind from further away. And all around the background buzz of bees and insects, drawn by the lavender and daisies and yellow gorse which grew in abundance. Again I lay there soaking up all that nature was offering and found it hard to find reasons to continue.  If I had not already booked somewhere to stay in Cáceres another two days walking away I might well have seen the afternoon and evening out under that tree. 

To prevent too long a journey tomorrow I needed to continue further but by now I had decided not to turn my back on this abundance of peace and nature and that I would see the day out under the night sky. So here I am, some hours and a few miles later, amongst the lavender giving me an extra five miles to do in the morning. But an extra five miles tomorrow morning is a cheap price to pay for a night among lavender and looking up at the stars.