We came to the very first town in Spain, called Villanueva del Fresno, and immediately discovered a recommended hiking trail just outside of town. It was twelve kilometres long but we found at the turnoff that there was really no safe place to park our campervan – so we drove and drove along a narrow beautiful laneway past many wildflowers and grazing livestock to find a place to ditch the van. Three kilometres later, we found a place to park next to a very old stone bridge across the Rio Alcarrache.
Well, that made our hike easier. Now down to a six-kilometre loop, we set off to hike along the river amongst grazing bulls and cows – which made a few of us a bit wary enough to opt for the other side of a barbed wire fence. Eventually, we found the trail cutting inland and worked our way back to the campervan. We decided this place was so nice it was going to be our campsite for the night!
Needing dinner and being high on castle exploration from earlier in the day, we decided to head back into Villanueva del Fresno for another snoop around narrow cobblestone laneways, central squares, and a castle. Like many of the villages we visited, the young children would all head to the village square to play after school.
We tanked up our water supplies again and headed for the village castle. This one was much more of a pile of rubble than the Castelo de Mourão, but it was situated with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside.
We discovered a local bullfighting ring in the village, so we decided to pop by and see if we could have a snoop. After a circumference of the structure and a few tries at the main door, and caretaker popped out and invited us all in for a free guided tour. It was only used a few times a month, but it was interesting to see the inside. Having seen a real bullfight in Mérida, Venezuela at the age of 8, I was not keen to see another.
After our bullfighting tour, we set off to try and find a place to eat dinner. There were a few recommendations in town, but neither opened until 9PM – as with most of Spain. To kill some time waiting, we found a pub open and drank ourselves some local beers. And what was on the big TVs in the pub? A live graphic broadcast of a bullfight going on in neighboring Seville. I chose not to watch, but many of my travelling companions could help but sneak a gory peek from time to time.
Finally, 9PM arrived and we heading down to the recommended restaurant. It turned out to be one of the best meals of our visit. They seem to be big on garlic around here, but that doesn’t bother me one bit.
Afterwards, we headed back to our planned camping spot late and I pitched my tent in the headlights of the van on the other side of a cattle fence, so I didn’t get visited in the night. A beautiful spot that turned out to be our favorite over the period of our travels, but I can’t say I slept great thinking about farm dogs visiting or whether a farmer might want us to move on.
