El Real de la Jara – The Irish Rover

In the late autumn of 2015, we set out from Sevilla to walk north for as far as we could, before the weather turned cold. On the fourth day we reached the small village of El Real de La Jara. It was my second time of walking north from Sevilla. The place where I previously stayed was not available, but I was able to reserve Hostal La Encima.

It turned out that the hostel was out on the edge of the village, in an industrial area, an unlikely site for pilgrims. As we tramped past factories and warehouses, we started to wonder if we had made a mistake in our directions. But there it was, at the far end of the road.

There was a bar connected to the hostal with extremely friendly and hospitable staff. We obtained our room key, and after a refreshing cold beer, we went to our room, via an adjacent entrance door. And that evening we ate a delicious plate of garlic shrimps and drank a bottle of local wine at a table on the pavement, sitting under the stars.

The next morning breakfast was served in the common area that ajointed the rooms.

I struck up a conversation with the guy who served the breakfast and I commented that it seemed to be a strange place for a hostal, rather far from the tourists and pilgrims. He said that most of their clients were connected to the mines or to the industrial area. I was not aware that there were productive mines in the area. I learned something new.

In late 2022, my investment research produced Atalaya Mining (ATYM) as a firm prospect. When I got into the details, I found that their main copper mines were just north-west of Seville and they had promising discoveries in both Galicia and in Sweden. Now I don’t know if ATYM has ever been a client of Hostal La Encima, but my gut feel was that this was a good one. I made a substantial investment in AYTM.

As of today, that investment has increased by more than 165%.

I believe that successful investment is a combination of skill and luck.

It helps that I have always been a lucky guy.

2-8 October, 2015

The path north from Guillena to Zafra covers 125 km and passes through five villages – Castilblanco, Almadén de la Plata, El Real de la Jara, Monestario and Fuente de Cantos. The villages are between 15 km and 27km apart, a distance that a hiker, carrying a backpack, can comfortably cover in a day. Originally it would have been the distance that a heavily armed Roman soldier would have been expected to march. Apart from some farmland adjacent to the villages, the countryside was empty of habitation.

img-20130227-00462 — A cork plantation near Castilblanco

For the first three days, the path wound through the rugged Parque Natural de la Sierra Norte to El Real de la Jara, shortly before passing from Andalusia into Extremadura. There was a long climb to Monestario, after which the landscape transcended onto the plains that surround Mérida.

img-20130227-00468 — Looking back from a ridge, before descending to Almadén de la plata

And the path down to Almadén de la Plata

Apart from Zafra, which is a large town with a rail and bus station and several hotels, the villages that we passed through were small, each with its church and a small central plaza, an hotel or rural hostel with a few rooms, an albergue with dormitory accommodation, a bar, and little else. And the houses and buildings were universally painted white, with red tiled roofs.

In the first three days, where the landscape was more rugged, the path led through many huge paddocks, where herds of cattle, pigs, goats, sheep and horses ranged free.

Pigs looking like hippos, with their own pool

img-20130301-00473 — El Castillo de las Torres (XIII century) outside El Real de la Jara

After Monestario, the land flattened, and the farming changed from mainly animals to crops, with occasional olive groves and grape vines. The path was dusty and the land parched; it seemed as if it had been since the last sustained fall of rain.

In the seven days that we walked from Sevilla to Zafra, the only other hikers that we saw were the strange couple pulling the cart; we had seen them arriving in the bar in Guillena and pulling their cart up the stairs to their room. We passed them a couple of times on the path, when they were sitting in the shade, resting or having something to eat and drink. They seemed to be quite shy, or perhaps they just wanted to be alone. I can well sympathize with the latter.

We always knew when they were ahead of us, when we spotted the tracks that the wagon tyres left in the dust. And each night we usually saw them arrive in a village, sometime after we did. On a couple of occasions we saw them enter the same hostel where we were staying, but they were quite reclusive and stayed in their room. I thought that they might have been on their honeymoon.

When we were on our way out of Zafra, we stopped at the bar of a comfortable hotel to have a coffee and a croissant, and who walked out of the restaurant and up the stairs but the strange couple with the cart.

Little did we know that we were to see them every day until Cáceres.

Leaving Zafra and passing the castle in the early morning sun

The former Roman city that is now Mérida

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