An easy day 24-25 km. Sicilian's name is Alesandro. The bar only opens at 7:30 am but since it's a short day we can wait. It's almost 8 am before it opened. Besides coffee only cold plastic food. Good thing I already had breakfast at the albergue (some leftover sandwich, banana and yogurt). Late start at 8:30 am. For today's route only one place to stop just after mid point so it's important to as least load up a bit before starting.
Pass an old bull ring to get out of town. Saw the tappers working on the pine trees, similar to rubber tapping except here it is done with a v-shape cut. The only challenge is majority of the trail today is along the pine trees and the path is very sandy, almost like walking on the beach and it gets inside the shoe easily. There are really no way around it as the sides are just as bad littered with stringy pine leaves, too soft and bouncy. Strangely it doesn't seems to affect me as much as the others.
Perfect refuelling point at Nava de la Asunción with tortilla, pulpo and sandwiches and we are off. There is a choice of routes after the town. Maura (Moira, spelt her name wrong) and Sandro (Alesandro) took the route and the right while Ivan and I took the left route. The right is slightly longer which I suspect may have less pine trail but later they said it is just as bad. In any case Ivan and I arrived at the albergue 10 minutes earlier. Just before Coca a beautiful scene of a granpa and granddaughter playing with the horses. Called the hospitalero to get into the albergue which used to be the house of a school teacher in 1931, that and lots and lots of other information from the chatty old lady hospitalero. Only one bathroom/toilet downstairs (a bit of a hassle) and four rooms of 2-6 beds each upstairs. Maura took the ladies room, Sandro and me one and Ivan by himself in another room, that is until the cyclists came. First one cyclist who took the last room then 3 more at 7:30 pm in Ivan's room. They came from Cercedilla today and it is hard to imagine how they manage the gravel climb up the mountain before Segovia. Told Ivan he should move to our room and take one of the top bunk (the elders should have the bottom beds, hehe). Reason is the cyclist have a different schedule from the walkers so he would be disturbed when they come back late from dinner vice versa when he leaves early tomorrow.
Washing all done and it's time to see the town. Coca is a nice town with a shady terrace outside the town wall. The bar serve food whole day and besides the calamares we each had platos a great time just chatting away. Luckily the supermarket was open as we need to stock up on food for tomorrow (Sunday).
Sandwiches all prepared and ready for the walk tomorrow....
No comments:
Post a Comment