Hervás to Baños de Montemayor

Our breakfast person in Hervás told us that the next stage of the Via Verde heading to another small town, Baños de Montemayor would be even more beautiful than the previous day. We were somewhat doubtful as to this possibility, but she was right.

Once over the high trestle bridge over the river, we basically did a gradual half circle around the valley and town on the elevated Via Verde, looking down on the town and its surrounding countryside. We kept having to stop and marvel at the views and it seemed to take us a long time to leave the town behind as we gradually made our way through the next set of hills on the rail bed.

Hervás does seem to have a special kind of microclimate indicated by many early flowering trees in the valley and wildflowers along the trail.

We carried on, with only the occasional walker or day cyclist for company and then they disappeared completely too.

We passed more abandoned train stations, sad reminders, like the lock houses on the canals in France of how times change so completely and what was once an important transportation route is no longer needed.

It was a short ride to Baños, described as a spa town, with facilities built on the site of Roman baths. In retrospect, we should have stayed two nights in lovely Hervás, skipped Baños and done a longer ride to Béjar.

We left the Via Verde to do a long winding road descent into Baños, another cluster of red tile-roofed buildings in a cleft of the hills. It was fun going down but I knew we would have to come up the next day!

In spite of Baños being a “spa town”, we had only been able to find one hotel available for the night. It didn’t sound wonderful and it wasn’t - very dated furnishings, small, plain room, bad shower setup but at least it was clean, quiet and included breakfast - the mid-named Hotel La Glorieta (€66/night).

We had too much time in Baños. It was very off-season and while there were lots of hotels and restaurants, they were pretty much all closed, as were the baths.

We walked around and found an old Roman road and some old stone troughs, continually overflowing with water, which was startling coming as we do from a very water-conscious place but I read that one of Baños’ main characteristics, due to its location at the back of the Ambroz Valley and surrounded by mountains of 850 to 1,200 m high, is the abundance of water with numerous natural sources and springs. We checked out old buildings and found some interesting old markers but we found it a dreary place, all the more so for the contrasting experience in Hervás. The things I liked about Baños was a stream rushing down the hillside just outside our room that made for pleasant background noise and a little bar/cafe where we had coffee and an evening glass of wine/beer.

The breakfast room the next morning could not have been more institutional-looking and it was simply your most basic coffee, toastada and processed oj so I was actually happy to get on my bike and ride up that big hill. Bye bye Baños! No doubt nicer accommodation might have given us a more positive perspective on Baños but they can’t all be a Hervás.

Our day - km. Elevation -