Sierra de Béjar

So it's been a few weeks now since I went to Sierra de Béjar. Pearl came to visit from London, and we went with Sonia. It's about an hour south of Salamanca (the city), and just barely within the province of Salamanca. It was really good for me to escape the city for a day. The gardens and green spaces here in Salamanca are gorgeous right now as they're colorful and filled with flowers, but it's not the same, and there's just not open space. So we went hiking on a route that took us past Peña de la Cruz and Peña Negra (Cross Peak and Black Peak, respectively). It seemed like a fairly long hike up, and was steeper at the end. Peña de la Cruz was first. It´s a giant cross built from granite. The mountains are just covered with huge, round, granite rocks.

Here´s Pearl and Sonia accompanied by the large pieces of granite. View of the other part of the mountain range on the way up. It had snow, so we decided to save that for next time. After much more hiking, we found ourselves at the top of Peña Negra. We're currently on a shorter little range of mountain, and you can see the other one over yonder. In between lies a valley. Driving into Béjar you can see up the valley and see just the dam from below. It was neat to hike up over it and see the lake from the top.And looking off in the opposite direction...The clouds were actually surprisingly close and eye level. It really played with our perception. It's hard to focus on a cloud. Mmm...so pretty.