Day 17: Cerro Muriano – Villaharta, Nov 29

We left town via a shared bike/pedestrian path that for a number of kilometres passes by a large military base. But once we left that behind (although we could hear loud, deep shooting for quite awhile) it was quite pretty, in oak woods with rosemary, rock rose and other plants of the dehesa. Although the highway was close by in parts you couldn’t see or hear it. The light rain in the forecast became heavier and pretty much it rained all day. We were glad for our ponchos.

Midway the path turned into a road—the old main road now replaced by a bigger highway. So luckily almost no traffic and even in some parts covered to be a dirt road but lots of the day was on asphalt and our legs and feet could feel it. The view looking away from the highway was lovely—misty oaks in the rain.

We knew from our host in Cerro Muriano that we needed to call the ayuntamiento before 2:00 to let them know we were coming. When we did so, we were told if we got there by 3:00 to come to ayuntamiento or if later there was another number we could call. But arriving by 3:00 seemed simpler so we picked up our pace and quite surprisingly arrived at 2:55, got signed in, paid our €10 each – only payable by card – and then were walked the block over to the beautiful albergue and shown around. There are eight beds in three rooms. We’ve taken a room for four so we can both have lower bunks. There are two bathrooms, a kitchen and living room. And with clean sheets and duvets to make up your bed. Very deluxe!

There is no restaurant in town but we hurried back to the store which was luckily still open as they were restocking shelves and got crispbread, cheese, bar mix and cans of tinto de verano for a late lunch. After showers we spent some time planning tomorrow’s route which at 34 kilometres is too long for us so we’ll opt to take a taxi for the last part of the day. We had hoped the bar might have something for dinner but no such luck, so we settled on a frozen tuna lasagna from the store which we could microwave at the albergue—pretty weird but at least hot and we had some leftover bread to sop up the cheese.