Day 14: Alcaracejos to Hinojosa del Duque. 23km.
We were prepared for another cold day when we left at 8am, wrapped up in our fleeces, leggings covering our legs and socks on our hands for gloves. It turned out to be not as bad as yesterday, it was still cold but there wasn't the biting wind blowing. It didn't take long for the sun to warm everything up and allow us to remove the leggings and socks from our hands but not warm enough to take off our fleeces.
After leaving the hostal we were wandering about outside looking at our guide book and also looking lost. A Spanish gentleman without us asking directed us to the Camino, pointing up the street and signalling a right turn. This took us along a walled lane and we were soon out of the town and into the open country. The profile of today's route was flat and it was, though the trail twisted and turned a bit which made it more interesting. Waymarking was very good again and we had no problems keeping on course.
It was all farming country that we passed through and it was mixed. The fields around the holm oak trees, where yesterday they had been a mass of white daisies, were ploughed round the trees ready for spring planting. Some had winter crops already through were giving the countryside a nice green colour. Some of the holm oaks looked really old, they have short very wide trunks knotted and gnarled with age producing peculiar shapes. Another 'spring first' for us was spotting some bright red poppies growing in the hedge rows. Sheep graving among the oaks were now more plentiful and we saw lots more cows in the barns feeding. One farm we passed had a huge herd of black goats that stopped eating to gaze at us as we made our way along the track.
We went through two villages today on the route. The first one, Villanueva del Duque after an hour, was reported to be a mining communitity of old. There was an information board relating to the mining in the area and the extraction and washing of the ore but it didn't say what the material being mined was. There was a monument in the square of a miner hauling what in South Africa is called a cocopan, a metal trolley for transporting the ore. The board told us to look out for derricks used in the mining but we didn't see any.
The second village, Fuente la Lancha, is said to be one of the smallest villages in the province of Cordoba but was actually quite a large place. A notice board told us that it had been designated a village in such and such a year, I thought a village was just a village and didn't require some sort of proclamation. The houses were very pretty painted white with the door jams and lintels made of the distinctive local granite that is found close to the surface. The fence posts are also made from the granite and at times we would mistake them for one of the Camino granite plaque waymarks.
When we left the second village we were on the road only for a short while until we crossed the Rio Guadamatilla then it was into the countryside again. The track now became very sandy and we had to stop a coule of times to shake the sand out of our shoes. With the flat track and good surfaces today we mad excellent time and were comfortably walking at 5km/hr. When we reached the Ermita de la Virgen de Guiana, a lovely little chapel with a picnic area we had just 3.5km to go and it was only 12:15am. But as usual the final section to the finish is the longest and the Camino took us through an industrial estate before getting to the outskirts of the town. Then it was a long trek to the centre only to find that the Hostal El Cazador was in the other direction on the A420 main road. By the time we got into our room it was 1:30pm.
We decided to have lunch right away and shower later. When we went down to the restaurant we found that lunch didn't start until 2pm for some reason and had a beer in the bar while we waited. We both had the same,salad to start and chicken and chips to follow. To cut down on what we are eating we didn't have any bread but took it in a 'doggy bag' for breakfast. For sweet Moira had an iced cream and I ordered an orange which also went into the bag, we shared the iced cream. Back in the room we had a lie down for an hour then went into town to look for a supermarket.
We headed up to the Cathedral and the town square but there weren't any shops, the place seemed dead. It wasn't just that it was a loner than usual siesta, there just weren't any shops in the town centre. After wandering around we were forced to ask directions to a 'supermarcado'.and eventually we found one and stocked up. We retraced our steps to the Cathedral and started to make our way back to the hostal only to find that we were close to the supermarket again, we had come in a full circle. Another her sign of spring were the storks in the nests on the steeples and high towers. There were quite a lot of nests in and around the Cathedral square, there was just one stork in each of the nests at the moment all sitting looking about for the arrival of their mates.
Back in our room at the hostal we settled down on the bed to relax and read. The room was lovely and warm from the heater we left on while we went out. Later we had a snack of bread and cheese with a cup of coffee then it was time to get to sleep.
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