The walled city of Avila, Spain

We left our nice spot by the stream as soon as we got up at 7:30am. It was only a short drive to the small city of Avila, and we were headed to a laundromat that opened at 8:00am. We figured if we got there early, we could get laundry done while having breakfast, then go explore the city.

Found a great parking spot right by the laundry, and close enough to the center that we could walk in.

Police in the middle of the night

Another gorgeous day in Spain. We left Max in his spot by the dirt road, and set off on a morning hike. We didn't really have any plans, but there are so many different trails that we figured we would just choose something and make up our route as we went along.

Didn't really plan on doing 13 kms (8 miles), but that's the way it worked out!

A gorgeous free camping spot

Our friends Glen and Steve had told me about a waterfall near the village of Riofrio where there was a difficult to access, but beautiful overnight spot. 

It turned out that we couldn't access it all, but we found an even better spot nearby!

Drive through the mountains

Sunday was a day of rest, but we did do a 50 km (30 mile) drive through a mountain pass just for a change of scenery. I had read of a couple of vans that had done the drive, but no motorhomes. The only problem would be the width of having to pass someone coming the other way.

And it was only 50 kms (30 miles) but it took an hour.

We hiked 19 kms (12 miles) to see a tree!

And of course we saw thousands of trees along the way, but this one tree is special.

It always makes a hike better when there is a destination of some kind... a waterfall, a cave, or maybe a viewpoint. But I'm not sure we've ever done a hike to see a tree!

We finally made it into the mountains!

Mostly cloudy yesterday as we made or way into the mountains west of Madrid. We ended up at the town of La Adrada where they have a motorhome service area to empty and fill our tanks, and somewhere to park for the night.

The parking isn't ideal, it's in a kind of a residential area. But the area surrounding the town has so many hiking trails and walks that we can do that without having to drive anywhere that we'll probably stay put for another night.

Sidetracked by a castle

Our original intention was to get into the mountains for some nature and peace and quiet after having spent too much time in cities. But we stopped for lunch in the town of Escalona, and decided to spend the night.

But along the way, we stopped in the town of Torrijos to do some shopping. They had a Lidl and a Mercadona right beside each other with easy parking for a motorhome.

Photo matching in Toledo, Spain

For those of you new here, my father had done two extended trips to Europe in the 1950's, one in 1954, and one in 1957. He took a lot of photos in slide format, and Ruth has digitized them and we have them on our laptops. So when we are in the same place as he was, we try to match up some of those photos by standing in the exact same spot that he might have stood almost 70 years ago.

We were pretty successful in this exercise here in Toledo, Spain yesterday!

We're actually a little ahead of schedule

Yesterday. we did the drive to the small city of Toledo, located just south of the big city of Madrid. We don't have to be at the ferry port in Bilbao until May 6 which is still three and a half weeks away.

So we're actually a little ahead of schedule. If we drove directly there, we're only 500 kms (300 miles) or so from Bilbao, but we've got quite a lot of things to see along the way, plus we're going to do some zig zagging to get up there. 

Castle and windmills in Consuegra, Spain.

There's been an odd haze in the air the last couple of days. It's the Sahara dust again that finds it's way drifting across the south of Spain a few times per year. It was pretty bad yesterday morning, but seemed to clear up a bit by the end of the day, and this morning it seems we have our nice blue sky back again.

We went for a short walk before we left the hill behind Piedrabuena, then headed for the town of Consuegra.

A visit from the park rangers...

We had a totally peaceful night, and woke up to see that all of the crowds of people had disappeared. Surprisingly, very little trash left behind despite the fact that there are no trash bins. 

I went for a walk around to see which spot by the river looked easiest to get Max moved to. Such a nice spot, and a few walks we could do in the area so we planned to stay a least one more night, possibly two.

We arrived and it was busy with crowds of people picnicking!

We tried to get an early start. We went to the laundry in Pozoblanco first thing. In fact, we were there by 8:30am, and we found a parking spot right out front. It was kind of odd because it was on a residential street. I should have taken a photo. Only two washing machines, and one dryer. Everything really clean. Half an hour to wash, and the machine automatically supplies the soap. Then twenty minutes to dry. 

From there, we went to the Mercadona grocery store.

We haven't got very far!

Not that we're in a rush. But since we arrived back in Spain it kinda feels like we haven't got very far. I've included a map for you below. We don't need to be at the northern coast for our ferry until May 7th, so we've got another month or so yet.

And it was just a short drive yesterday as we made our way to the town of Pozoblanco. 

Back in the countryside

We enjoyed our four days in Cordoba, and our three days in Seville before that, but after all of that city time we were overdue for some countryside!

Thursday, Friday, and Sunday are all national public holidays here in Spain. The main road leading north from Cordoba was pretty busy, so we were happy to get onto a quiet side road.

Andalusian Horse Equestrian Show in Cordoba

We had bought tickets online to the Wednesday evening Andalusian Horse Equestrian Show at the Royal Stables in Cordoba. There were two choices of tickets... regular and premium.

My mother gives us some birthday and Christmas money each year, and we still had some left over from last year. We usually use that money to so something we wouldn't normally do on our travels. So we decided to go to the horse show, and splurged on the premium seating.