We are camped beside a part of one of the routes through to Santiago de Compostela. There are supposedly 200 routes, starting from various places (It says here), seven are popular. I suspect the one by us is one of the less popular ones. About 3kms of it takes us from our campsite on a pilgrimage into Alcuéscar.
We began our walk and as we turned onto the path heading into Alcuéscar we were joined by a handful (well, three) of other pilgrims. You can spot the real pilgrims ‘cos they have walking poles in a variety of designs, ranging from aluminium trekking poles to a simple wooden stick. The tourists, on a short pilgrimage to a local bar/supermarket, carry nothing.
Our pilgrimage to Alcuéscar was largely pointless; Alcuéscar was mainly closed. We knew where the Dia supermacado was but struggled to find an open bar. We eventually found a bar with signs of life down near the main road through town. We went in and ordered two beers. Having been given the beers we were presented with a tapa of … I don’t know what.
The weather was basically overcast but dry so we went outside to enjoy the dulcet tones of a tractor-load of local workers pollarding the streetside trees with a clumsily wielded Stihl chainsaw on a long pole.There’s nothing [buzz] like a [buzz] calm drink [buzz] in a sunny [not, buzz] local bar.
While sucking our beers [buzz] out of the bottle [buzz] – they seem to serve them this way to stop warming the beer up with a glass – we began [buzz] nibbling our tapa [buzz] with toothpicks. My initial impression was [buzz] that it might be tripe [buzz]. No, it wasn’t. It was, however [buzz], something very soft and fatty [buzz] in a tomato sauce with onion and carrot [buzz]. You can serve pretty much [buzz] anything in such a sauce [buzz] and get away with it.
Now, we have seen frequent occurrences [chainsaw moved on] of a bizarre offering, bizarre to us, that is, both on menus and in supermarkets. What we saw in supermarkets on polystyrene trays was pigs snout. This very same, though I’m failing to recall the Spanish, was on offer at the bar in our very first Burgos campsite. Clearly cooked for long enough to make an oak tree tender, I have a nasty feeling that that is what we were eating.
Fat, slithery and slug-like, I polished it off. Well, why not, this might end up being lunch? Never let it be said that I am culinarily unadventurous.
We repaired to the Dia supermercado, which prover to be considerably less super than the one we’d recently visited in Madrigal de la Vera. Nonetheless, we filled out rucksacks with a few provisions and set off back along the pilgrim route to our campsite.
I was grateful to arrive back at Frodo.
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