Tags
bloom, Caceres, cherry, Cherry Blossoms, Cherry Trees, Extremadura, Jerte Valley, Valle del Jerte
…questions in my mouth as opposed to cherries that is. Caveat: This post is not about losing ones virginity, just losing one´s singleness in a a beautiful spot… and it´s not technically about Northern Spain, but a perk of living here and being able to experience the variety rest of Spain easily…
Recently I took my significant other, now more significant, Lynne, on a little surprise road trip To ask her to marry me. Let´s see what happened…
We left Cantabria on a Sunday afternoon after our big Sunday family lunch (another one of the great things about living in our small town in Northern Spain, we have a big family meal together every Sunday). Lynne had no idea where we were going. Three hours later we were in Ávila where we had a great time, you can read my take on that here or read Lynne´s take on that here. The city donned us a little precursor of what was to come in the Valle del Jerte.
Cherry blossoms and the moon in Avila
We got up and out of Ávila fairly early and headed out to a “surprise location”. We drove about an hour then made it to the top of the pass at the top of the Valle del Jerte. Jerte is the main town but also the river that runs through the valley, hence the name, Valle del Jerte or Jerte Valley. I made Lynne put on a blindfold and then drove to a spot and asked her to marry me, a lot more than that happened and you can read her post about it here if you want the details. I´ll spare you those here as it could be a bit embarrassing for me.
Valle del Jerte in the northern part of the province of Caceres, which is part of Extremadura in Central Western Spain near Portugal. In late March or early April, depending on how the winter fares this happens:
Explosion of cherry blossoms
Literally billions of cherry blossoms fill the Valle del Jerte. It attracts quite a few visitors, but you need to be flexible if you want to catch it. We caught it pretty much peaking. It was spectacular and standing under the trees in this particular orchard was like being in a blizzard of cherry blossoms. The sheer number of blooming trees is amazing, a concert of nature. Over a million trees… I´ll let you count the blossoms….
A feeble attempt to capture the amount of cherry trees, they run much further up and down the valley
We enjoyed the trees a bit more making plenty of stops to check them out.
Stone walls and cherry trees...
It was a great morning, red pants, bagpipes, albarcas and all. You´ll have to read Lynne´s post to know what that means. We then continued on to Plasencia and eventually Caceres, more to come on that…
Northern Exposure Spain 