Day 22 - Cañaveral to Galisteo (18 miles)

It was an unsettled night. The wind and low temperatures meant I slept fitfully and persuaded me to start packing at 7am in the cold morning darkness. I was glad of the activity as a means to warm my body. Once I had passed through the sleeping village and started the gentle ascent of the hills behind, the best of the day began. Forests of pine, cool and dark, then of cork, deep brown trunks stripped of their bark, and finally bush dominated by the tall shrub that seems to grow so readily here. It is unknown to me but its spindly fronds are like witches' brooms except light green and covered in tiny yellow buds. And among all this, flowers of red and yellow, white and purple: thistles, lavenders, gorse and poppies and any number of others I do not recognise.

I was absorbed in the scenery and its backdrop of distant hills but the long day yesterday, last night’s limited sleep ahead of today and a lack of decent hot food in between was taking its toll. I was looking forward to a hearty meal and a bed so was glad when I saw the hilltop village of Galisteo in the distance. But it seemed a slow and sole punishing four miles along a stone strewn and circuitous track before I arrived at the bottom of its Moorish walls. 

I am now rested and fed and have walked the parapet of those solid walls that constrain the old village. As I was leaving an aging local insisted on taking me back into its narrow whitewashed streets to the small town hall to see the clock with its serpent hands but she could not tell me their significance. Now I am enjoying a hot dinner and am trying to decide on tomorrow’s plan: the only accommodation is at seven or thirty one miles. I guess there’s always camping.