Leaving Badajoz

Zagan the motorhome’s bounced off the Portuguese border and back into Extremadura in south-west Spain, heading an hour or so through the cork oaks and red-earth hills to Cáceres. After a bunch of nights on aires and free camping, we’ve eased ourselves into the municipal Camping Cáceres, which charges €18 a night ACSI out-of-season rate, and oddly (but happily) provides a wee wet room and loo for each individual pitch (N39.48857, W6.41279). The site is about four miles out of town, but there is an aire located much closer to the centre. We’ve opted for the campsite as (a) we’ve a ton of washing to do (b) we like the luxury of a ‘real shower’ from time to time and (c) it just feels nice to be on our own pitch where we can ‘camp’, cook outside, and sit reading in the sunshine.

We really enjoyed our three days in the aire at Badajoz, feeling lucky to have found a space in such a sought-after little corner. All the while we were there the aire was full past capacity, with a handful of ‘overflow’ motorhomes getting tight to the metal fence on the access road. To get a space you really needed to arrive between 10am and 2pm at the latest, and we saw lots of vans slowly roll around the packed aire in the late afternoon before heading off elsewhere.

It was clear to us why the aire was so popular: it was in a really lovely location besides the town’s Puente de Palmas bridge, which the locals employed for evening passeggiata-style strolls, with a great view of the Alcazaba citadel and set on the edge of a large grassy park complete with cafe and sports facilities, all awash with families enjoying a sun-warmed weekend. The fact it was free did no harm either! None of this was diminished by the adjacent house’s evening karaoke sessions from the balcony, which mainly consisted of a nipper singing snippets of Freddie Mercury live over and over again! AAAAYYY-OH! AAAAYYY-OH! AAAAAYYHH-OH! You get the picture! :-)

Badajoz town was a nice place to wander too. Like lots of Spanish towns, there’s lots of opportunity to rent a shop or buy an old house to do up should you fancy living here. But abandoned buildings aside, the freebie or low cost attractions were plentiful. Too many for us: our travels these days lean far more towards simply enjoying life than sight-seeing. We enjoyed a late breakfast at a cafe in the Plaza Alta, surprised at the low cost in what we’d normally class a tourist-trap spot, paying just €6 including tip for a café solo (espresso), tostadas con miel (toast and honey), migas (fried breadcrumbs with garlic) and a chocolate a la taza (hot chocolate).

Fuelled up, we hit the town’s archaeological museum, in a 16th century palace and free to enter. They even throw in a great freebie audio guide (bring your smartphone). Spanning from 100,000 BC right through Spain’s various eras up to the Christians. I stood and stared longest at the chipped pebbles, tools from a hundred thousand years ago, and squinted, my mind trying to bend to the idea of how many billions of humans have wandered the Earth, wrapped up in our own egos and politics, hopes and fears since these ancient tools were smashed into existence.

After an hour or so in the museum we took a walk around the walls of the Alcazaba – the ancient Moorish citadel (well, a hobble for Ju, her knee’s rapidly repairing itself but is still bruised and swollen). The town’s provided a series of information boards in Spanish and English, explaining the history and functions of the various sections of the defenses, all much appreciated by us two. The walls look pretty formidable to me, although a joint British, Spanish & Portuguese force managed to breach them a couple of hundred years back to take the castle from Napolean. According to Wikipedia the battle was so gruesome, the enraged victorious soldiers killed 4000 civilians, and went on a drunken rampage taking 3 days for their officers to get them back in line.

Back at the aire we got chatting with a lovely British couple (who happened to be in a Hymer too), Gayle and Mike. These guys have been travelling for years, including doing a ton of walking and hiking tours across various countries. Their tales of hiking a 500 mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail in California, dealing with life-threatening temperatures crossing the Mojave Desert and having to talk down a bear, had me slack-jawed. They’re off back home to walk across Scotland, again, before heading out to tour Germany later in the year. Happy travels guys (you can read more about ’em here)!

Since Ju blogged we were in Badajoz, a fair few suggestions came in for the surrounding area, both over the border in Portugal plus other towns here in Extremadura. We’ve eyeballed ’em all, and in the end come to the conclusion we’ll have to come back. There’s just too much to see and our exploration rate these days has dropped to an all-time low: we’re enjoying just being alive in such wonderful parts of the Earth, soaking up the sunshine, running the trails (me), enjoying the odd meal out and listening to the birdsong. We’ve enjoyed so many castles, cathedrals, museums, churches, palaces, cemeteries, galleries and archaeological sites over the years that we no longer feel any urge to try and see every last one of those we haven’t already. There’s a great deal to be found in the smaller details, I think: the huge birds soaring above us, the vertical-running lizards, the shepherds shouting at their beloved goats.

So, we’ve bypassed the extra-ordinary Roman sights of Mérida, the relaxed hill towns of Portugal and the huge surf over at Nazare, to head here and chill out on a campsite. Chatting this afternoon we may not even head into Cáceres. We can’t apologise for it: we’ve all our own lives to live, our own limited number of days on this Earth, and this is how we choose to spend a few of ours. I wish with all my heart that you too can choose to follow your own sense of self, and do whatever feels like the right thing for you.

Cheers, Jay

P.S. Just remembered: we’re having a few issues with our SOG Unit, which controls the smell of our loo. After some fiddling about with a multi-meter, some gaffa tape and a big knife, it turns out the micro-switch which turns the fan on and off has gone faulty. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. An official replacement is about £35, so it’ll be cheaper to buy a soldering iron and a new switch from eBay for £20, and we’ll fix it back home. For the moment I can assure anyone wondering whether SOG Units work: yes they certainly do. As soon as ours fails, we know about it the next time we head to the bathroom…