Border country

We stayed at a campsite at Cáceres where they proudly proclaimed a multi €M investment in personal toilet blocks at each pitch.
Yes you’ve read properly - every pitch on the site, that’s 129 in total, has a half share of one of these:

It has a toilet, washbasin and shower - with hot water on tap provided by a gas combi boiler mounted on the outside wall. That’s not one boiler per block serving two pitches, but a boiler each.
I can’t do the maths as I’m on holiday but I can’t see how this can be anything other than a big money pit. Over one hundred boilers to buy, install and then service at least annually. Also they all need cleaning and it has to be harder to clean one hundred little buildings than one big one.
Cáceres is full of old buildings, and as usual the oldest are at the top. There’s plenty to do wandering the old streets and alleyways. Every now and then something a little more interesting crops up, like this statute of San Pedro de Alcántara, a 16th century ascetic:

As with many statues, this one requires either touching or kissing, if you are one of the faithfull and so inclined.

We travelled west and today we made another typical lunch stop:

As usual with the Landy, we are able to go just a bit further off road than most cars. This was a hundred yards further than the “normal” picnic area. A great old bridge, no longer in use.
We crossed the border into Portugal and pulled into a lovely small campsite at Pomarinho (www.pomarinho.com) in the hills of the Serra de S. Mamede Nature park. This is run by a Dutch guy called Dorf who was currently hosting a family, (also Dutch), “we’re nomads”, who had recently returned from an overland trip to Mongolia and back.
They had bought a yurt there and it was now pitched on the campsite and they are doing the chores. The nomads had a teenage son and daughter but mother and father had conceived their third child on the trip and it was born in Portugal thirteen weeks ago.
So we are in the hills, border country, with very dark skies giving fantastic views of the Milky Way, a sky full of stars and a sunset to die for.

The nearest town, Castelo de Vide, is built on a hill, apparently has thirty two churches and chapels and a castle at the top of the hill, which is freely accessible.

The walk to the town took about an hour, through the woods which in Spring are lovely.

Slightly further away is an even mightier hill town. Marvāo has an almost impenetrable castle, sitting on top of a rocky outcrop at 900m asl. the old town is fully enclosed by the walls and these are in good condition meaning that you can walk around them, should you so wish, in the noon day sun.

Images can’t do justice to the horror of Paratrooping Insects which brought an early end to the tour of Marvāo castle. We thought that the french tourist jumping around must have sat in an ants nest and the young woman with her blouse half off and her hand in her bra really did seem strange. The crunch underfoot of millions of earwigs should have been warning enough; however when we had paid our entry fee and gone into the castle grounds we were bombarded by hundreds of flying earwigs - which as soon as they landed, simply stretched out their legs and scuttled off. However most of them were landing on us. I have never seen anything like it!
Ughh!!