El Ronquillo to Monesterio

We explored the village of El Ronquillo and its surrounds as much as was possible. The weather continued to be warm and sunny and I sat on our little deck with shorts on. Being the weekend, more people had arrived to stay in some of the units and seemed to be having lunch parties with family and friends on their decks. It was nice to see some activity. I was surprised to see a school of music in this small village.

We had a menu del día for a late lunch at a little cafe - venison stew with the inescapable frites and salmorjo, the traditional tomato soup but I forgot it is a cold soup. Otherwise, we shopped at two little mercados and a great fruit and vegetable truck a short walk from our place and made use of our kitchen.

And we explored some hiking trails through the dehesa.

But we were anxious to move along the Rute de la Plata - the weather was good and the route was flattening out. What we hadn’t anticipated though was that being Sunday, there would be a lot of motorcyclists who were also hitting the N630, either for the day or returning from a weekend somewhere. I can see the appeal of this road for them - no cars, nice curves, good surface and no speed monitoring by police. We find car drivers very considerate in Spain, often slowing down to pass and giving us a wide berth. But testosterone-fueled motorcyclists seem to be another breed. If they went past at a reasonable speed as some did, it was fine but the acceleration and noise from others, often in packs was pretty awful for the first part of the day. Thank god no one wiped out in front of us. They looked suicidal to me.

We were looking for a cafe late morning but resorted to having a coffee from the gas station across the road from a cafe whose parking lots was full of the motorcyclists. What they could possibly see of the beautiful countryside around them, I don’t know - they would just have to be focused on the road. So lesson learned - we will try and stay off the road on Sundays, maybe even Saturdays.

Apart from the obnoxious motorcycles which seemed to fade away by late morning, it was a beautiful and easy ride on a gently undulating road. We had left the hill climbing behind and were on a plateau, at times even a ridge with hills in the background on either side. We eventually saw signage that indicated we had been riding through the 187,827 ha. Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche Parque Natural and had entered the Province of Badajoz and the Communicad of Extremadura. The Parque has a rich landscape of oak and cork oak pastures, forests of chestnut trees and supports swine and cattle farming but has a very low population density. It was so lovely with lots of very old stone walls and spring flowers under the trees. It is such a unique landscape, so different from our dense, dark forests. We saw a few other day cyclists but once the motorcycles faded away, we were pretty much out there by ourselves on this old Pre-Roman route in a vast rolling landscape with the Sierra Norte in the distance.

We had packed a lunch and stopped to eat it by the gates of this beautiful “finca” or estate.

The international SIMs we bought for our phones were expiring and we needed to renew them. We discovered you can’t do that over the phone or online and the small places we are in don’t have phone stores BUT we could do it at certain gas stations. Lo and behold, we came upon a big Repsol and were successful in buying another month’s worth of international calling and data for €10 per phone. Such a deal and essential for our mode of travel.

So topped up, we happily cruised into the small town of Monteserio, and found our swanky new apartamento hotel on a quiet street. The very nice manager showed us around, apologized for the indoor pool being closed for maintenance but invited us to us the “spa”. I convinced Jim that it would be the perfect end to our ride and we went down to find that we were the only users of a steam, a sauna, a swimming pool-sized hot pool with various jets and underwater loungers and waterfall-like features you could turn on. It was perfect.

Later, we went down to the small restaurant/bar below our hotel and had a drink on their little terrace in the sun. Too early for dinner of course but we returned at 8:30 and had a good dinner. The restaurant had been full earlier with people having drinks but we seemed to be the only customers for dinner! We shared a really good pear and walnut salad - greens! - and I gave in to a craving for a hamburger. Then to bed, only a flight of stairs away! We seemed to be the only hotel guests.

Our day - 54 km - gently undulating - and a spa!