The long and winding road .. sorry railway

Most people were there on time (the ones not requiring hair straightening.  Excellent breakfast but no 'full English'.  Plenty of fruit, cold meats, cheese, breads, bacon, mushroom and sausages.  We all left with a little something to carry us over till our evening meal.

It was tine to have our second experience of the Madrid metro and navigate our way to our station.  There was obviously a run on somewhere as a large number of our fellow passengers were in running gear and had numbers pinned to their chests.  Running seemed a bit of a mad idea - it was 8.30 am and already almost 20°C.  News from the UK was it was 4°C but not how much snow.

12.15pm

We are halfway through our train journey to Badajoz.  Some people are sleeping and others are filling the time with name games and 'Guess the Celeb'.  Temperature currently displaying 23°C and rising.  It might drop to 17°C tomorrow and rain.  What a hardship!

The scenery is very interesting - mountain range in the distance with rolling hills near the track.  There are a lot of trees that look a bit like olive trees but David thinks they are cork trees.  Buildings are rustic - large stones, solid window and door frames (bars at the windows) with tiled areas for decoration.  Lots of red tiled roofs.

Our fellow passengers are very friendly and attempting to have conversations with us.  I've just managed to explain to my neighbour whereabouts in the UK with him speaking in French; me mixing broken French and English and a very rough map showing football teams.  He says Sunderland is a very poor team (sorry Colin)!  Fortunately a number of our group are pretty fluent French and Spanish speakers.

This is very odd - the train has just started to go backwards to continue its journey to Badajoz!

The scenery is amazing.  We're getting higher into the mountains and looks a geologist/geographers delight.  Definite signs of glacier activity - limestone pavements and lots of very large boulders looking like they've just been dropped.  There are lots of white storks flying around.  Numbers of these birds are soaring and they live in very close association with man.

The highest temperature reached was a final 29°C and it was just under that when we reached Badajoz.

We were met by Antonio Guillén, our local contact, and two others who drove us to our hotel.

After unpacking, we had a wander around Badajoz then spent a pleasant hour or so with the locals.  Perfect time to practise our Espaňol!

Avenida de Huelva shows how much further on their flowers are - wisteria in full bloom!

As it was a Sunday and everywhere was closed, we elected to have dinner en masse in the hotel restaurant.  €15 for a four course meal including wine and water went down a treat and certainly made up for the five hour famine on the train.

Liz informed us breakfast was up to us but we had to be in the lobby by 8.55am.