Poppies on the Meseta

Today I walked 20 kilometers (around 12.5 miles) with relative ease, for which I am profoundly grateful. Our Burgos rest day was healing.

Today we walked up onto the vast central plateau of the Spanish peninsula, the Meseta. I am glad to be out of the city and back in the Spanish countryside, where the silence is profound, the sky is immense, and the choices are limited. Red poppies are everywhere.

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3 thoughts on “Poppies on the Meseta

  1. How gorgeous, and I am grateful that you had an easy time of it today. It has been lovely here in Ashland, and the Grizzly Peak slopes are all green from the rain that we’ve had recently.
    I will be posting photos to FB, if that’s a possibility. Feliz viajé, y besos!

  2. Hi Barb, I found this interesting tidbit on the internet I wanted to share with you! I wish you and Jed the best on your amazing journey!

    The red poppy is a traditional symbol of America, when it remembers its war dead, perhaps because of the fact that it is the red poppy that grows abundantly in the fields near and surrounding the cemeteries of the Flanders region of France and Belgium, where more than thousands of dead soldiers, all Allied casualties of World War I lie buried. This annual herb red poppy grows up to two to two and a half feet in height, and sports a thick hairy stem with bristly pinnately divided leaves. The scarlet flowers of the red poppy, that bloom during late May until October are generally 2 inches across. Flowers have also blue-black stamens and four large petals, each with a purplish-black dot at the base. Its fruit is a capsule with several red black seeds. Most Americans may be familiar with the paper version of the red poppy worn on Memorial Day, perhaps because not many would have had the chance to spy the real red poppy growing in fields, because this plant has escaped cultivation and is primarily found in private gardens.

    The red poppy is both an analgesic as well as a sedative. red poppy contains a nonpoisonous sedative alkaloid called rhoeadine, and quite unlike its cousin the opium poppy, the red poppy is not a source of narcotics. The sedative properties of the herb were put to good use by mothers of older times, when they fed infants food laced with red poppy, so that they would sleep undisturbed for long hours. The blossoms of the red poppy would also be used by mothers when they compounded them into a cough syrup for children. Nowadays, poppy seeds are one of the most popular ingredients used in baking.

  3. Hi Barb, Thank you so much for sharing your amazing journey with us. Your writing about the experience is truely inspired. Wishing you and Jed an inspired journey.

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