Marta and Chester's Maleficent Adventures

Rain caught up with us in Cáceres too 😳. We ended up spending a few hours hiding out in Decathlon while we waited for it to pass — thankfully Spain seems to have a Decathlon every 50 km or so. Once the downpour finally eased, we drove towards the Portuguese border to escape the rain… and we actually outran it! Perfect timing for a quick walk.

We spotted an ideal peak in Peakbagger: short, but with more than 100 m of prominence. Since I’m working on improving my prominence score there, I was super happy about it. And there was a mine in the vicinity too. Double score. Mine ended up being closed, the peak was not 😂. Peak was not a huge adventure, but here’s what I logged in Peakbagger about Aljibe.

We tried to bag more peaks in the area, but we were clearly surrounded by private lands, and the day was running out. So we drove even closer to the Portuguese border and decided to check if it would be possible to hike Torrico de San Pedro the following day.

We found a road with several gates. We managed to open all of them except the last one.

Past the first gate we were driving through sheep country and cork oak plantations — the trees had been stripped of their bark but were still happily alive. The gate that stopped us was still open to pedestrians. There was also a trail marked with pope-like colours: yellow and white.

In the morning, we followed the trail. It was the nicest one we’d done in Spain so far. Some bushes that looked like heather were blooming profusely, making the trail feel absolutely magical. The day was calm — not hot, no rain. I really enjoyed the walk up.

We kept going despite the end of the trail. Then we came across another barbed-wire fence, and then another.

Eventually we were able to reach the summit, though we felt a bit uneasy about the number of fences we’d had to cross. Still, for me this was the nicest, calmest, spring-like hike in Europe so far.

We did not even realize when we crossed the border to the 5 country of this trip.