Following Canals and Arrows: Lebrija to Las Cabezas de San Juan

 “I want to connect with nature and become part of its symphony.”

Via Augusta Stage 6

In so many ways, yesterday never ended...

Last night was ...frustratingly... a completely sleepless night.  We followed the Easter procession of the Body of Christ through the darkened streets until around 10:30 PM, but there was another procession at 1:00 AM, and another at 2:00 AM.  We had originally assumed that our room would be quiet, as it backed onto a closed courtyard with potted plants and a fountain three floors below.  However, it turned out that this area served as the hotel bar's smoking area, and wave after wave of people sat below us, seemingly trying their best to outshout each other.  Around 2:45 AM, someone brought a guitar out, and a flamenco concert commenced.  The impromptu rotation of singers was quite good, and the music was accompanied by enthusiastic clapping, castanets, and shouting.  This went on until 5:00 AM at full volume. Even as I lay there wishing for sleep and dreading having to get up and walk today, some part of me realized that it was quite special to listen to this authentic and spontaneous concert.

Then, perhaps ironically, as the music went silent in the early hours of the day, the birds began their morning chorus. As such, from 5:30 AM onwards, we both were simply lying in bed looking at the ceiling. 

Nevertheless, we got up at 7:00 AM, feeling very old, tired, and sore.  Where did the days of existing on 2 hours of sleep per night before hiking 3-40 km go? Thankfully for us, the hotel restaurant was still open, and when we made our bleary-eyed way downstairs, we were served a breakfast of café con leche, zuma, and tostada con marmelada.  We're pretty sure the same staff who were dealing with the masses of people yesterday afternoon and last night were still there working, which put our own exhaustion in perspective quite nicely. They looked very tired, but they were very kind, both to us and to the line of delivery trucks that came bearing bags of fresh bread, boxes of fresh veggies, and plastic crates of pop.

Departing Lebrija, Returning to the Camino

After breakfast, we headed back to the Camino, getting momentarily confused before finding the yellow arrows once again and following a nice bike trail and brick walking path to the edge of town. 

A large interpretive sign along the route explained that we were following the Camino del Fontanal, which would later become the Camino de Los Pozos.  Furthermore, we saw that this trail would take us around the Balsa Melendo, a large reservoir used for irrigation purposes, and that we could expect to traverse a number of different landscapes, ranging from the flat, lowland plains of the Guadalquivir Marshes to a region of gently rolling hills, to areas with lots of greenhouses and garden plots.  

As we left town, we turned down a paved road that gently descended beside what looked like an abandoned park.  The treed property had dozens of picnic tables, multiple playground areas, which had once been quite colourful and elaborate, and what looked like small enclosures for birds or other small animals. 

It was a somewhat lonely-looking place now, and it made us wonder what stories it had to tell. Perhaps it was a victim of the changes brought about by the pandemic, but it still had enough of its previous character for us to easily imagine families enjoying a picnic or a day out.

Yacimiento Arqueologico El Fontanal

At the bottom of the hill, we came to the Yacimiento Arqueológico El Fontanal.  The interpretive center was fenced off, but a man was cleaning thick, yellow palm tree blossoms from the concrete walkway with a leaf blower, and he kindly let us look around. 

The site contained two stone buildings and a small aqueduct, and from what we could tell, the small, round, stone structure was built in the 16th century to create a reservoir from a naturally occurring spring. It looked like the stone structures were used to bring water to the town, and perhaps to irrigate the farmland in the surrounding areas.

After this brief brush with history, we continued down the country lane, surrounded by peaceful fields of wheat, olive trees, and as yet unplanted patches of rich brown earth.  Over the course of the day, we spotted many tractors on the move, both out in the fields ploughing and travelling back and forth on the tracks we were following.

The smell of freshly ploughed earth permeated the warm, humid air, giving the day a sense of renewal and expectation.  Southern Spain has multiple growing seasons, but clearly, we were at the beginning of one of them.

Birding around Balsa de Melendo

Soon, we came to one of the highlights of the stage - the big body of water known as the Balsa de Melendo. A large interpretive sign suggested the reservoir had been created in 2003 for irrigation purposes, and since its creation, many bird species have made it their home.  It is also used by locals from Lebrija and Las Cabezas for canoeing, cycling, fishing, and walking.  We were very excited by the birding possibilities that lay ahead as we began our walk around it on a treed gravel track.

At first, things started slowly, with the lakeshore hidden by a dense wall of conifers.  We could see the peaceful expanse of the water beyond, and at one point, a large Grey Heron took off from the shore.  A little further along, we came to a field on the far side of the road, which was filled with about two dozen Western Cattle-egrets, their large white bodies and peach accents contrasting with the lush green of the field.  Above us, a steady stream of Glossy Ibis and Little Egrets passed by in the clear blue sky.  The trees were also alive with birdsong, giving a very cheerful sound to the morning.

It was a pleasant walk, even though we never really got too close to the reservoir.  When we reached the far end of the water body, the Camino presented us with a choice - one set of arrows pointed to the left, heading towards the town of Marismillas, and the other pointed to the right, following along the Bajo de Guadaquivir. 

There was no indication of what the difference in the routes would be, or why we might want to choose one way over the other.  Our GPX tracks provided no additional insight, as they were nowhere near the junction, so on a whim, we decided to head right, toward the canal.

Spanish Canal Walk

We've walked along several canal paths, one on the Camino de Madrid in Spain and a much longer one on the Great Glen Way in Scotland, and we enjoyed both very much.  This was another enjoyable walk, following beside the arrow-straight, concrete-lined waterway. 

The sun was shining, but a cool breeze was blowing, and the only sounds were the crunch of our own feet on the gravel track, the wind in our ears, and the chirping of the birds in the surrounding fields.

As we walked along the waterway, we spotted two young boys fishing on the far side.  They didn't seem to be having much luck, but the punctured carcass of a very large Common Carp on the path in front us suggested there certainly were fish in the canal, despite the fact that it was completely paved and lacking in natural vegetation or substrates. 

We also spotted two little brown and white Common Sandpipers flitting ahead of us down the length of the canal, as well as the (by now) usual contingent of Western Cattle-egrets, Little Egrets, Glossy Ibises, and Yellow-legged  Gulls flying past overhead.

When we reached the end of the canal, the path turned and began to climb up a hill along the edge of a lush green olive grove.  On the other side of the track was a fallow field of tall grasses, with views of beautifully rolling hills beyond. We could also see the white buildings and the tall white tower in the village of Marismillas down below us.  The partly cloudy sky cast interesting shadows across the green, brown, and sandy coloured hills, creating an ever-shifting landscape that felt alive.

Wonders of Nature

Below us, we could also see a pond, and it soon became apparent that it was filled with thousands of birds. As we stopped for a better look, a huge group of them rose into the air, creating a beautiful murmuration as they wheeled through the sky before settling back onto the pond's surface.  The phenomenon was too far away to see very well, so we walked downhill off the trail and across the fallow field to get a better look.  

The field itself was full of birds and more than one rabbit that went dashing madly away as we approached.  When we reached the pond, we got a close-up view of hundreds of Lesser Black-backed Gulls floating on the water and wheeling about in the air above. 

There was also a solemn-looking row of tall black Great Cormorants along the edge, a group of large European White Storks foraging among the gulls, and individual Black-winged Stilts, Pied Avocets, Western Cattle-egrets, and small groups of shorebirds moving around among the chaos.  It was quite a busy and noisy pond!

We spent some time enjoying the avian spectacle and then put some thought into how to proceed.  The GPX tracks we downloaded for the Via Augusta suggested there should be a track on the far side of the pond.  Perhaps if we had chosen the left fork instead of the right one earlier this morning, we might have ended up on that path. 

We were closer to the alternate route shown on our GPX tracks than to the one we had been following when we got distracted by the birding pond, but we were pretty sure that a considerable expanse of wet mud separated us from where we guessed the track lay.  The way ahead looked flooded as well.  In the end, we decided to backtrack across the field, climbing up through long grass as we went.

Views of Las Cabezas de San Juan

When we rejoined the marked Via Augusta path, we continued climbing the hill.  As we ascended, we enjoyed our first spectacular views of Las Cabezas de San Juan, our destination for tonight.  The town perches on a small hill, and the Cathedral of San Juan sits atop it, clearly dominating the community.  Standing at the edge of the olive grove, a light breeze brushing our hair and creating gentle waves in the field of plump green wheat stretching out ahead, we couldn't help but be stunned by the beauty of the landscape laid out below.

Eventually, we descended the hill, walking across a farm toward the highway. Almost every day has ended with a stretch of walking along the highway, and we feared this was what lay in store once again. 

We took a break on the edge of the farm, assuming the worst, but soon discovered there was a service road beside the busy highway for us to follow. 

We made our way along it, navigated around a roundabout following the yellow arrows, and then ... the arrows disappeared.  This has been a slightly frustrating aspect of this trail for us so far, and once again, we were left without useful GPX tracks and without any trail markers.

We guessed that we had to continue straight onwards, and after following the dirt track for about a kilometre, we came to an overpass that took us safely across the highway. There on the side of the bridge was a lone faded arrow – clearly, we had been following the correct route. 

Having crossed over the highway, the white, pink, terra cotta and sandy brown buildings of Las Cabezas de San Juan stood in front of us. The town's profile was strongly geometric, looking like it was constructed from rows of differently sized cubes stacked randomly one on top of the other.  The windows made dark rectangles in the light squares of the buildings, and the odd palm tree broke up the symmetry.  To our North American eyes, it looked very tropical and exotic.

Las Cabezas de San Juan

We made our way to a town square, the Plaza Martires del Pueblo. at the side of which sits the Igreja de San Roque.  The now familiar scene from Semana Santa greeted us, with all the tables lining the square filled with extremely dressed-up people preparing to eat a large afternoon meal.  We found a table in the shade of a large tree and had a couple of cold beers, attracting the attention of quite a few people in the process. 

Some of the older men in particular seemed drawn to our table, pacing in slow circles around our backpacks as though trying to figure out what they were and what they were doing there.  We didn't stay too long, as a steady stream of people was arriving, all looking for tables at which to eat, and we still needed to find our accommodations.

We had to pick up the keys to our apartment from the gas station, but it turned out to be a lovely place with a private walled terrace that was open to the sky above.  We quickly went to the Dia grocery store downstairs to get supplies for the next few days, since the afternoon siesta was starting, and we assumed everything would be closed later for Easter Sunday and Monday. 

Afterward, we returned to take our showers, do laundry, and hang everything outside in the sun on the terrace to dry.  We stayed inside in the quiet, cool shade of the apartment and worked on photo editing and writing our journals for a couple of hours, and then made a dinner of veggies, dip, and nachos for ourselves. 

Exploring San Juan

As the afternoon turned to evening, we headed back out, wanting to explore the town a little further.   Tomorrow will be a longer stage for us, and the Camino doesn't seem to go past the Cathedral, so we decided it was best to explore while we had the chance. 

As we approached the main square, we heard the telltale sound of drums and a brass band playing, signalling an Easter procession on its way.  We followed the music until we spotted a truly huge Easter float with the Virgin Mary being carried down an extremely steep street.  Progress was very slow, making the procession a very social occasion for the spectators and participants like.  

Semana Santa

Having witnessed several large and elaborate Easter processions over the past few days, it occurred to us that terrain must be very important to the people (mostly men) who carry the floats.  Some of the more elaborate displays weigh several tonnes, and the task of keeping them upright, straight, and under control while turning tight corners must be exponentially more difficult with steep and winding streets than in flatter towns. 

We watched until the float was carried past, and then continued climbing up to the Cathedral of San Juan.  It was closed, but even from the outside, it was a truly impressive building.  From the very top of the town, we could look out across the flat, agricultural plain below where we had walked earlier today.

Eventually, we made our way back down towards the main square, just as a light rain was beginning to fall.  Seeing an ominous-looking storm cloud hanging overhead, and concerned about our laundry, which was now doing the opposite of drying on our terrace, we set off towards the apartment.  However, the way was blocked by the Easter processions, and in the end, we decided to join the thousands of spectators filling the square to watch the floats. 

Stepping up onto a raised flower bed with blooming rose bushes, tall palm trees, and fake sod, we watched as two huge floats were slowly carried passed, accompanied by many fraternity members dressed in black robes and pointed hoods, as well as two marching bands.  It was a truly impressive spectacle.  We watched until we couldn't stand still any longer, and then walked around, back to our lodgings.

From here, the Via Augusta continues north on a daunting 34 km stretch to the end of the next stage.    Thankfully, our evening was quiet, enjoying a simple dinner of nachos in our apartment and figuring out the logistics of the next few stages.  For all the frustrations of poor signage and long detours, the day was still wonderful.  Tonight, we are left with vivid images that include flocks of storks, glittering canals, and the endless adaptability that pilgrimage demands.

See you on the Way!