More Cáceres

If we don’t bike, we walk and this was a day of a lot of walking in Cáceres.

We needed to stay a 4th night there due to no accommodation being available in the next town at the start of the weekend. Our lovely apartment was already booked so my Bookings.com investigation found a 4 star hotel at a very reasonable price on the route we would take to cycle out of Cáceres. We decided to check out its location and on the way, walk through a big park, with a sculpture garden called the Parque de Principe or Prince’s Park.

It’s a huge park of over 22 ha, with a long central paseo that runs from one end to the other, with several large fountains all connected by a wide, gradually descending rill or water channel. I suggested to Jim that this would be a great addition to our landscaping at home. He seemed reluctant. On either side of this paseo are 26 sculptures, and then other landscaped areas including a cactus garden. There were cycle paths running throughout and we followed them to our hotel, which seemed well located for our departure from Cáceres.

Later on, I went out and visited the nearby 15th C Cathedral of Santa Marta and climbed the bell tower to see the views over the city. Early evening was a good time to go - no one else was going up or down the incredibly narrow serpentine stone stairs - and the light over the old town on all 4 sides of the tower and out to the countryside was beautiful. The woman at the front desk of the church told me it was ok to go up as the bells had already rung, and I could see that was good advice.

I’m not a big fan of all the religious art and trappings in Catholic cathedrals. Generally I find them dark, depressing places that certainly give me no spiritual lift. And as one well-known atheist writer said, who wants a faith that fetishizes a person being crucified - apologies to any Catholic readers. But their architecture and imagining about what must have gone into their construction, makes an occasional visit to one worthwhile. So I had a quick walk around inside this one.

The altarpiece was not covered in gold as many are but was polished carved cedar and pine wood, apparently completed in a few years, which seems astounding. One of two other things I found interesting was the Chapel of the Black Christ dating from the Romanesque period. My audio guide provided little information on how that came to be, but it is taken through the streets of Cáceres for the Holy Week processions. The other thing of interest to me was a figure in another chapel of a saint, I forget who, killing the devil, who is of course black.

Our day - 21,000 steps. And a tower climb.