Just north of Mérida, among cereal fields and holm oak, lie the quiet remains of the Casa Herrera basilica, an early Christian and Visigothic church that most visitors to the city never see. It is a modest site, low walls and foundations rather than soaring arches, and that is part of its charm. The surrounding countryside is typical of Extremadura: wide, open, lightly farmed, with big skies, storks nesting on pylons and the smell of dry grass and sheep.
What makes it interesting is the long chain of history around it. Mérida was founded by the Romans in 25 BC as Emerita Augusta, a colony for retired soldiers, and it became one of the most important cities in Hispania. When the empire faded, Christianity took root, and the Visigoths who followed in the fifth and sixth centuries built churches, many of them on earlier Roman sites. The basilica here belongs to that late period, when the old Roman world was slowly turning into something new. Mérida itself kept great importance under the Visigoths, and its bishops were among the most powerful in the peninsula.
For a rider, this is a gentle start. The roads around Mérida are straight, quiet and smooth by comparison with the mountains, and the main attraction is the sheer space. The ride then goes east and north toward the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, a Hieronymite monastery in the Villuercas hills that was among the great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Spain, and where the road begins to twist and climb. The nearby villages, Trujillanos and Mirandilla, are small, with perhaps a bar and a bakery, so for proper fuel head into Mérida, a town of around fifty-six thousand with stations on every approach.
Plan the day around the heat. Extremadura can reach forty degrees in summer, and the flat land offers no shade. In spring, when the fields are green and flecked with poppies, or in autumn, it is a lovely region to ride, and the history sits so quietly in the landscape that you could easily pass it by.