May 20, 2013

Black skies and really cold – so much for the weather forecast! We load up straight away this morning without breakfast – I refuse to spend another penny in such an inhospitable place. Fortunately, we find a small bar up the road with a smiling barman who serves us coffee and toast.

The road starts off undulating today crossing desolate, brooding moorland – more so because of the black skies. It is a day for concentrating on the road and getting on with it. We speed along – not quite as fast as we might because of a really rough road surface, but after all the slow mountains of the past few days we still feel as if we are flying along. The countryside changes gradually into the open pastureland we travelled through on the way up. The numbers of wild flowers are much fewer now, probably killed by the frost. The road becomes completely flat passing by agricultural fields and small villages. It is noticeable how dilapidated and depressed the villages are – we speculate that this is because new roads have by-passed all the villages leaving the bars and small shops with no passing trade. For us the road is quiet (still very rough though) and great for speeding along towards our goal of Zamora. It is still too cold to camp but Zamora is a tourist destination with an impressive castle and cathedral and so there should be a choice of hotels.

We make it in good time, an hour quicker than it took us for the same distance yesterday, giving us plenty of opportunity to take a look around the city. Tomorrow we have a shorter run of about 60 kilometres to Salamanca where we hope to camp for a couple of days.