Day 14: Merida to Villafranca de Los Barros

March 3, 2025

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The day brought the challenge of cold and rain, but it was not quite as tough as the forecast had made out. For starters, it was 9°C and not 7°C. That's a big difference. And the headwind, while there, was not cold and brutal. The rain - ok, was wet, and it washed away almost any chance of photos.

This shot from the door of the hotel establishes that the day was dull, though it does not succeed in showing the rain. And this is the last shot that the camera, the Lumix ZS-70, took on the day. It languished under my raincoat all day. Then when there was a spot of clearing, I took it out, but it opened with a complaining creak and refused to focus. Sheesh.

Wearing our rain pants and all available warm clothes, we made our way through traffic, out of Merida. We were glad when we reached the N-630, which we have come to trust for safe passage to the south. The road remained good, but this time it was not idyllic. Rather than one car per 5 minutes, it was one per 15 seconds. But the shoulder was good, so the problem was mainly the noise of the passing cars on the wet road. Aha, we actually do have backup cameras with us so the following photos were taken by Dodie with the Canon camera we got from Susan Carpenter. It's great to have options!

The main feature of the landscape now was not at all dehesa, but rather olives, and notably vines. In the photo below the vines are trained along wires, but the majority were thick trunks standing alone, about 5 feet apart. We assume that they then grow like a shrub, rather than trailing vines onto the ground. We would have to come back in six months to find out.

Today's ride featured mainly vines and olives (plus rain and cold).

It is still a nice countryside, but chilly as we were, with traffic, and with virtually no cameras, it was less fun than it could have been.

In taking the N-630 we have been often ignoring the EV1 and or the La Plata track. This might have backfired as we passed through Almendralejo, which was a fairly large town. N-630 took us through the ugly outskirts of this - with lots of car dealers and light industry, and with sketchy or no place to ride the bikes. Since we are "experts", we just calmly cranked through it all. No sense getting tense or disappointed.

On the other side of Almendralejo, N630 resumed its more or less benign nature, and we plodded on. We see now from the track why we were "plodding". While not steeply up, the road climbed steadily for our whole day.

Meanwhile my fingers, with their poor circulation, had given up on working, even inside my fairly good Showers Pass gloves. But we brought out the secret weapon - the chemical hand warmers. These really work, if you are willing to travel with their notable weight in the pannier. We are, because we know that otherwise these shoulder season trips would not work for me.

Despite just plodding along, we arrived at our target town of Villafranca de Los Barros and the guesthouse Casa Perin by 1 p.m. We ate our lunch in the churchyard opposite, and knocked on the door at 1:30. We were happy that the lady welcomed us in, and once again we guided our bikes way back though the extremely deep house, finally lodging them in a covered patio.

That effectively brought our day to a close, since there is not really anything to go out and see here. We can of course write this blog, and we have some other admin chores, but eventually we will end by listening to audiobooks, or heaven forbid, catching up on the latest atrocious world news. But wait, there is a bathtub here! How many baths can I take between now and tomorrow?

The (closed) church opposite Casa Perin.

Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 314 km (195 miles)

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