Life in Ciudad Rodrigo

With just a couple of weeks left here before we head back to Culebrón we've suddenly begun to realise all the things we still have to do - the restaurants we haven't been in, the local food we haven't eaten, the bars we haven't drunk in, the photos we don't have, the nearby villages still to visit and lots more. One of the things that makes Ciudad Rodrigo Ciudad Rodrigo is its walls. They completely encircle the town. We walked them with our houseguests last weekend as part of our regular visitor itinerary. It was the first time we'd ever counted the gates. The six gates are Puerta de la Colada, Puerta del Conde, Puerta del Sol, Puerta de Santiago, Puerta de Amayuelas and Puerta de Santa Cruz

One of the distinctive things about Ciudad Rodrigo is that the city walls are still completely intact. Short of scaling the stonework the only way into the old town is through one of the many, just over car width, gateways. There are about 2kms of wall and I suppose that it's at least 8m high all of its length with many stretches being a good deal higher. Then there are twiddly bits like the castle and the various ramparts built to defend the main wall from cannon balls. Quite a lot of stonework. These blokes have been working on the stretch of wall just near one of the gates, just repointing it I think, since some time before Christmas. They may have done as much as 200m in, say, the last six weeks. Spain calls its current financial problems The Crisis and The Crisis has hit the building industry particularly hard but even my rudimentary arithmetic suggests that these chaps are going to have jobs long enough to weather even the longest economic crisis.