Day 7: Zafra – Villafranca de los Barros

Tuesday 3rd April 2018

19,2 km (169.2 km)

This morning we had a rather leisurely start. My mutterings about giving up on the walk and just travelling around Spain staying in all the Paradors was met with a stoney silence and ignored. I’ll be looking into this for a future visit as apparently they offer deals with a 5 different city stay voucher (the thought of this is helping me cope with the rather cramped albergue this evening with the noise of the wind howling putting me off my blog writing). We left the lovely town of Zafra, which is definitely worth another look when one’s feet are more disposed to wandering, passing La Torre de San Francisco (which is the only remaining part of a 15th century cathedral and stands incongrously amongst modern housing and rubbish bins) and were soon once again in open countryside. A French pilgrim caught us up and we walked with him until a coffee stop 4km further along the route, at which point he took off as he has to walk 35k+ per day to cover his itinerary of 2037km by May 31; he must be in Brittany to be welcomed by his charity, Lames De joie, by then. His name is Loick Duboisrochefort which sounds like something straight out of the French revolution and it was good to finally meet another pilgrim albeit briefly. He showed us how to breathe like Afghan soldiers (!!!) told us to buy some French product called ‘nok ‘ for blisters and then he was off in a cloud of dust.

The day was short and quickly over. A coffee stop at Los Santos De Maimona (where the locals have painted massive yellow arrows onto the road to make sure we leave, I think) then it was a 15km amble into Villa Franca De Los Barras where we are now staying in the most jam packed albergue I have ever seen. Mind you we have now met some other pilgrims …there are 8 of us here; a lovely Canadian couple (Heather and Don), a young German girl, Sara (who looks about 20 and is walking in plimsoles on her own !), an elderly French man who we have seen quite a lot over the last few days and an elderly French lady who we met separately a few days back …they seem to be walking together now and he’s just made her a cup of tea so that looks promising! And then there’s a German lady who stole my bed so I’m now on the top floor with my nose scraping off the ceiling and very much hoping I don’t need to go to the toilet in the night because I will almost certainly break my neck on the ridiculous staircase and will awaken Heather and Don who I will literally have to climb over to get to the staircase. We made it out for the Menu del Dia, before everything shut at 15:00, and are now waiting for the shops to open at 20:00 to go and buy some supplies for tomorrow and snacks for this evening…hopefully the wind will calm down during the night and it will be another perfect day of cool temperatures and bright blue skies.