Villaconejos de Trabaque to Salmerón, 25 km walked

Pepe advised that the route today includes a diversion around a broken bridge over the Rio  Guardiela where the water is too fast flowing to recommend attempting to walk across.  He also suggested that if we took the road it would be shorter by a couple of kilometres. 

So as we leave today, we have big discussions about which route to take. Nina and I chose the road last time because of the awful conditions underfoot and although it did rain in some style overnight, we are hopeful that the track will be more manageable this time.  We decide to take the track and have our fingers firmly crossed.

The scenery at the beginning of this walk is absolutely stunning with rolling green pastures, lovely cloud formations and a bit of blue sky poking through. 

There are newly planted walnut orchards here and there. 

After 3 km the landscape changes quite significantly – more ups and downs and more scrub land.  The track has also deteriorated but not in a muddy way thank goodness. It started off a smooth compacted sand which was lovely to walk on but now it’s become gravel with a large pebbles to twist our ankles and dig into our feet.

We’re very glad to be enjoying this fantastic scenery that we missed entirely last time.  There is significant cloud cover – mostly of the white and fluffy kind giving us perfect walking conditions. 

After about 8 km the path changes to soil and although it can’t be described as muddy, it is damp and it does start to stick to our boots but not too seriously. 

We walk above a deep ravine with a fast flowing river down below. Then we see where the broken bridge is at the bottom of the ravine as advised by Pepe. The flow, though not terribly deep, looks to be very fast with strong currents. Nevertheless we do consider going down and crossing it with great care, but when we walk a little further, we can see all the construction workers building a new bridge and the path down to the old one is closed off, so we have no choice but to take the diversion which forms two sides of a triangle partly on track then on a long and winding road – the CM2023. The detour adds approximately 3 km to the stage.

We are on the road for the rest of the way. At 20 km we reach the village of Albendea and stop for a cold drink and a bit of rest before heading back out on the road for the next 5 km into Valdeolivas (25 km). This is a large town where there should be all facilities available including a bank which I desperately need (and doesn’t exist).  Info tells me there is accommodation provided by the town hall but not in the form of an albergue, so possibly on the floor of the sports centre or some such. I feel my days of sleeping on the floor are well and truly behind me and so we decide to keep going to the next town of Salmerón where there are a couple of bars and a shop and a good albergue where we stayed last time. 

In communication with one of the kind guys we met at Villaconejos de Trabaque previously he offered to meet us in Valdeolivas and drive us the 7 km onto Salmeron (which turned out to be about 20 km by road!)

Whilst waiting for Antonio we were entertained by a rather precocious young child who belonged to the bar owner. He was collecting broken beer bottle glass from the ground and handing it out to us like precious treasure. He took a particular shine to Nina and demanded her attention for rather too long. Bless!