Storks and Art in Los Barruecos, Caceres

Zagan the autocaravana is a bit confused. He’s back at Camping Caceres (N39.48857, W6.41279), having been out for a look around Los Barruecos Natural Park. He’s confused because he’s not sure he’s ever left a campsite and returned the same day before. We’re not sure if we’ve ever done it either; once we’re in a campsite that’s it until it’s time to leave. When we checked in we planned to stay for a couple of nights to clear the laundry backlog. However, the campsite offers a fourth night free if you pay for three, so we thought we’d have a last little ‘holiday’ before starting the trip to Calais. Our ‘chunnel’ home is booked for two weeks time, which seemed like an eon when I was working and writing my ‘out of office’ email ready for a holiday, but now it seems incredibly short.

The campsite is about 4 miles from the city of Caceres. Normally we’d be getting the bikes off to cycle in, or catch the bus for a look around. However my knee is still iffy, and Jay has already been around the old town on a run (he’s out on a 22 miler as I type this) so we decided not to bother with the town. The city looks beautiful, from the photos on the wall in the campsite restaurant, but we’ve seen a lot of similar-looking places around Europe on our travels from hill-top Tuscan towns like Montepulciano in Italy to the coastal delights Trogir of Croatia. Instead we headed out to see some natural beauty at the Natural Park Los Barruecos, which is just a few miles away from the town.

As we drove towards the park every tall structure such as church towers and communication masts had a stork’s nest as a hat on top of it. It looks like there is a lot of good luck in this part of Spain! Malpartida de Cáceres, the town next to the park, is in the region of Extremadura, which to me sounds like a Harry Potter spell, but the landscape of Los Barruecos was more like something from Game of Thrones (in fact part of season 7, a great battle between the Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen armies was shot here).

This park was declared a Natural Monument in 1996. Its large granite rocks, carved by time, contain many nests of white storks and other birds. We only managed to walk the short route down by the lake to the main rocks and back, but it was great to be out and about. The weather had turned a bit cooler (only 17°C – we’re in for a shock when we get back to the UK), and it was quite windy, so we took shelter behind a concrete car embedded in a concrete box and watched the storks fly in and out of their nests gathering twigs. As each one returned the others would all clack their beaks as if applauding the landing, it was wonderful to see and surprisingly noisy to hear.

The car and box were one of the pieces of contemporary art dotted around the park, which also contains the Vostell Malpartida Museum. Opened in 1976 by the German artist Wolf Vostell (1932-1998), co-founder of the Fluxus movement and video art pioneer, the museum is in a former 18^th century wool washhouse on the edge of the lake. I have to be honest here. I loved the Painted Rocks in Tafroute, Morocco, lots of the exhibits in the ARoS Modern Art museum in Aarhus and visiting Salvador Dali’s house in Port Lligat (not so much his museum in Figures though), so I’m not sure why but I just didn’t like this work. Maybe it’s because I only saw the stuff that was outside, plonked in amongst a beautiful part of the world. Whatever it was I just didn’t get it or like it.

Fortunately there was enough going on in the sky above us, so we didn’t have to look at the pieces of art for too long.

After a good hour or so with our heads to the sky, we made our way back to Zagan. Next stop was a big shop at Lidl before returning to the campsite. On our way back to the van, we spotted even more wildlife at ground level.

Tomorrow we set off on our two week run back home. We’re hoping to stay in the warm weather for as long as possible so it may end up being some long blasts across France. Jay is back from his run, so it’s time to sit in the sun and heat up the remoska for a spot of lunch. Another great thing about being on a campsite, with hook-up we can use our remoska to cook up jacket spuds or pizza – yummy!

Ju x