Day 18 - Channeling Isaac

Tue 3rd Oct., Cañaveral to Grimaldo, maybe 9 klms ...

I tempted fate last night by predicting that today would be an easy day. Easy in the sense that it was always planned to be the shortest day of the whole trip. I'd planned it this way because yesterday had been planned to be our longest walking day, which of course it turned out not to be. Anyway, for once I actually had a win over fate, because it was in truth a relatively easy day (easy on a trip like this cannot help but be a relative concept in itself).

Isaac Newton's third law speaks of every action having an equal or opposite reaction. And so it was today. The "action" (remember, this was an easy day), was leaving Cañaveral and heading fairly solidly uphill on a rocky path. Even though it was early-ish in the day it was still quite warm (and no breeze to speak of), and so I'd put it into the hard-work basket. The "reaction" was the next few kilometres through firstly a pine forest and then a magic cork oak forest. It's hard to adequately describe the beauty I find in these oak forests, and I was pleased to have the experience again as I thought we had left them behind somewhere around Monesterio.

Here's a little bit about cork oaks, and then a few before and after forests photos.

Above three, Cañaveral: morning coffee at Bar Alba; wall art at a local school; the "hola" tree and town lemon in the background

And humans too ...

The "action"

The top of the hill

The "reaction"

Our guidebook had told us about this place. It's apparently a strip club, dusk till dawn sort of stuff, so no life during daylight hours. But the new VW Taigo out the front suggests there's money to be made in this business

Above: various oak trees, the first two clearly showing where their bark had been harvested. The last one is a close up of a harvested trunk

We are staying the night in a lovely Casa Rural, La Posada de Grimaldo. The owner told us that he purchased the place in 2011 as a ruin, fixed it up (still a work in progress), and opened it as Casa Rural in 2013. The room we are in, possibly the oldest on the property, some 3/400 years old, he thinks was once a mill, the first of some dozen or so in the immediate area.

Above: various shots of tonight's Casa Rural. I don't normally include accommodations shots in the blog, but this place is quite awesome. We are staying in the Anton Gaudi room. The last photo is of the outside of the room, showing what may have been the entrance to the old mill.

Much of the afternoon was most pleasantly spent engaged in a far ranging chat with Jonathon from British Columbia. We won't see him again, as he is riding to Santiago, so from tomorrow he'll be well ahead of us. But a delightful if brief encounter all the same.

Big day tomorrow. 20 klms if we go straight to Galisteo, or around 24 klms if we divert via Riolobos (and therefore a town/food stopover). I think we've chosen the 20 klm option.