Life in Ciudad Rodrigo

Since we've been back in Ciudad Rodrigo Maggie and I have been comparing and contrasting the two places where we live. We've decided that neither area is better or worse than the other - they're just different.  On of the plus side, for Salamanca, must be some of the country villages. I really like the way that the older houses seem to be completely at one with their environment. Sometimes the built stone walls incorporate some crop out of rock - often groups of houses and buildings just grow up a hillside - it's as though the buildings are an extension of the natural rock. Mind you when I went looking for a photo to put here to prove my point I found that all the houses that looked like that were generally derelict. And then, I must mention the efforts of someone to keep all the villages as twee as any tourist could want. There's a photo somewhere in one of the posts of a chap riding a donkey, today a bloke obligingly walked his sheep through the village almost as ...

I'd read somewhere about an impressive length of disused railway line at a place called La Fregeneda so, today being a bank holiday, we drove up there to have a look.  We found the village OK and, on an information board at the entrance to the village, there was mention of the last 17km stretch of the line from La Fregeneda to the International Bridge on the Duero having 20 tunnels and 13 viaducts and a change in height of some 300 metres. We wandered about trying to find the line and a few kilometres up an unmade road we saw a couple of the viaducts in amongst the hills but we couln't find the track itself despite there, supposedly, being a disused station in the village. Class 40 was a type of diesel locomotive used by British Rail and presumably by the companies that came after in the UK. I once met a group of lads, members of the 40 Riders Club, whose ambition was to ride a train, at least once, pulled by each of these locos.