Monfrague National Park & Caceres – Spain & Portugal Tour 2009

The day dawned fresh and sunny and we headed straight to the Monfrague National Park. The main attraction of this place is its birds – particularly vultures, eagles and rare black storks. Although we aren’t big bird watchers, the idea of seeing big birds of prey in the wild proved irresistible and armed with a park map from the park office in Villareal de san Carlos, we set off to the Castillo de Monfrague where we parked and walked to the top – a steep 30 minute walk.

It was well worth the effort as the scenery is excellent and the park is amazingly rich with magnificent birds. Unlike most wildlife watching, patience wasn’t really required. Once we reached the top of the castle tower, vultures, eagles and other birds of prey were visible in all directions. You never needed to wait more than five minutes to see something new.

After an hour or so at the top, we made our way down to the car park where we had lunch.

We then continued on the EX-208 (an excellent road, like almost all we used in Spain) towards Caceres, where we were planning to use our first Spanish Aire*.

The motorhome parking area at Caceres proved to be everything we expected and was a thoroughly pleasant place to stay. We took full advantage of the facilities and also took a walk around the old town of Caceres, which is only 10 minutes walk away from the aire (signposted Albergue Municipal).

Despite it being Sunday afternoon, our walk bore fruit; we enjoyed two excellent ice creams and returned to the van with a fresh baguette and two chocolate pastries for breakfast the next morning.

Distance driven: 74 miles

*For full details of this and many other official motorhome parking and service areas in Spain and Portgual, I can thoroughly recommend “All The Aires Spain and Portugal”, £11.99, published by Vicarious Books. The book was our bible for this trip and worth its price several times over.