Salamanca sits at about 780m above sea level, some 200m lower than Burgos. Our overnight temperature dropped to about 10°C so, early in the morning our heating kicked in. This place more sensibly has a 10amp supply, though, so no dramas, happily.
There’s a 7km cycle track from our campsite to the Roman viaduct, the puente Romano, constructed in the 1st century AD. Once the morning had warmed sufficiently to contemplate a bike ride, off we set.
The track was quite nicely done in places. Eventually we arrived at the bridge and found a bike park, to which we locked our steeds. Received wisdom is that you should walk across the bridge, with no backward glances, to the far side. I presume you are now supposed to turn around and go, “ooh, ahh”. We did. Well, on a Spanish level, this is probably, “ooh, ahh”. It certainly beats Lerma. Here’s a couple of shots, one showing the arches and one showing the roadway with the cathedral looking a little larger. You pick.
Having played tourist as instructed, we walked back across the ancient bridge. Salamanca turned out to be pleasantly compact, for a main town/city. We walked up and around the cathedral to follow the main shopping street up to Plaza Mayor. The square was surrounded with thousands of chairs set out ready for the lunch crowd, who would be paying a premium for the pleasure of sitting in this admittedly magnificent square.
Next port of call was the covered mercado. This was a disappointment. It was moderately small and half the trading units seemed to be closed. Given our familiarity with the majestic and enormous covered mercado in Valencia, I suppose it was always bound to be.
All of the eateries that we looked at seemed to be concentrating on main meals rather than a light tapas-type bite to eat. We did a swift search and found a couple of more suitable options, the first of which was closed. Number two, however, looked reasonable, away form Plaza Mayor avoiding the mark-up, and we made our way there. It looked fine, we sat down and picked our way through a salad washed down with a couple of glasses of vino tinto.
We needed another food shop so made a rather tortuous way to a Mercadona which was (sort of) on the way back to our campsite. We snagged a couple of days worth, together with the required accompanying alcohol, and stashed our booty in our bikes’ panniers.
The trip back to the campsite was into a stiff headwind – it seems to be blowing east to west – so we were glad of the electric assistance.
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