All we like sheep have gone astray
It was relatively quiet in the bar this morning as I ate breakfast. Last night I had to sit in a corner to avoid the flying darts. Against the wall was an electronic darts board, one that registered your score on a screen and totalled it up for you. There was much excitement, whole families involved, kids running around, yelling and screaming. This was the first darts board I'd seen in Spain. Hardly a Spanish game!
Not that it's ever really quiet in a Spanish bar. The men don't converse; they shout at each other. And even if the bar were empty, the large screen would be blaring out daytime television game shows where contestants engage in inane activities overseen by youngish women with carefully contrived cleavages, not too high, not too low.
Gone are the vines and olives. Today, I walked over undulating, rocky pasture land. Twice I encountered shepherds with their flocks, managing as they have done for thousands of years. On one occasion, the sheep were spread out across the right of way of the Via de la Plata, a hundred or more, feeding on the new grass, and I had to walk very slowly to avoid stampeding them.
As I think of the Biblical image of the sheep, both for the people, the flock, and for Jesus, Agnus Dei, it wasn't really the most appropriate choice of animal. I mean, sheep are creatures of very little brain.
Towards noon, the way led me up into the old town of Caceres with its ecclesiastical and government buildings. I visited the cathedral with its impressive retablo,
and climbed the bell tower for a magnificent view of the city.
I walked down from the cathedral, along the road for a while, on the shoulder between the barrier and the oncoming traffic. This was a place where a Camino footpath on the other side of the barrier would have been a good project. Then the Via de la Plata took off across the fields and Into Cascar de Calcares.
Every albergue is different. In this one, instead of being in a separate room, the toilets and showers are actually in the bedroom. The shower was hot, at first, anyway, but the fan caused the shower curtain to blow towards me and cling. Hot on one side, cold and clammy on the other.
I paid a visit to the cheese museum. Everything was in Spanish, so I was at a disadvantage, but I did learn from talking to the person in charge who spoke a little English, that the cheese in this district is made from the milk of the very sheep I had passed this morning, and that they were in fact Merino sheep. I tried to explain the Australian connection (built on the sheep's back, as we learned at school) and I wondered whether cheese is produced from the Merino in Australia. I had hoped that there might have been a cheese tasting involved, but I was out of luck.
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