A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. CONFUCIUS

Monday 1 March 2010

Mérida to Baños de Montemayor

Have posted this via YouTube as I was finding it difficult posting it direct from Windows Live Movie Maker.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's good to see these. I can see the bleakness and the cold and wet, and the long solitary days.

I'm looking forward to the bit I know beyond Zamora.

What's the music on this clip?

Andy

The Solitary Walker said...

Ha! If you thought that was bleak, cold and wet... just take a peek at the video above!

Haven't got quite as many shots north of Zamora unfortunately, as the weather was so bad (except for a couple of days in Puebla de Sanabria) that I kind of lost interest in taking pictures. However, I have got some, and I've just posted them.

The song 'Sanctuary' is by Eliza Gilkyson, one of my musical heroines. Very little known over here. I was fortunate to see her in Nottingham a few years ago - playing to a tiny audience in some small underground bar. She was divine. I had a short chat with her - some garbled nonsense no doubt - do check out some of her CDs.

Rachel Fox said...

So many lovely photos...an exhibition? A book? Or has it been done before a zillion times?
x

Anonymous said...

That picture at 3:48...where is that? That got a quite literal OH out of me. and the sound track..terrific. Once again, thank you, Karin

The Solitary Walker said...

That's the little walled 'Arabic' town of Galisteo, about 70 km north of Cáceres in the region of Extramadura. The next photo shows its Sunday street market. That whole stretch was quite pretty, though I hesitate to use the word 'pretty', as much of Spain has a wildness and a rawness which the word doesn't suggest.

Two types of walking were very common along the route - a 'closed-in' feel along the old Roman road, where all you'd see would be holm oaks, cork oaks and cattle and pigs grazing beneath them; and an absolutely contrasting feel of giddy, wide-open spaces when the trees gave way to vines and cultivated farmalnd.

And, strangely, every now and then, there really would be a 'pretty' stretch - the stone walls and green fields strewn with limestone rocks just north of Cáceres, or the rolling hills covered in deciduous trees with river valleys and small plots of pasture around Baños, for example - which would remind me of England.