Camino de Madrid. Day 2, April 23, 2019. Tres Cantos to Manzanares el Real. 27 kms

With a hey ho,the wind and the rain

It was a day of variable weather, so we were constantly donning and doffing ponchos and down jackets. In the morning it was windy and wet, leaving me shivering at the bar where we had our second breakfast. The rain stopped in the afternoon, and then started again, and as we climbed, the weather cooled off, only to warm up again as we descended into the valley and the town of Manzanes el Real. And it was a hard day, 12 kms in the wind and rain, and then fifteen up to the top of a hill, and down again.

We awoke at 5:30 and were out of the dorm before the police knocked on the door at six o’clock. We had been directed to a bar that opened at six and was bustling when we arrived. It was a bar with character, where the workers arrived for breakfast before their early morning shifts. 

I had another fitful night. Strangely, although the albergue advertised places for four, there was only one double bunk, already taken by a Belarussian couple, leaving a very thin mattress through which my hips protruded into the floorboards. But there was no charge nor request for donations.

My pack heavy on my back, we left town, crossed the bridge over the motorway, and rejoined the Camino. A winding dirt road led down into a broad valley, through undulating pasture country dotted with shrubby pines. We passed some stately horses, and a bull chasing some cows but frightening them off with his jangling cowbell. Eventually, the path climbed out of the valley and up to the town of Colmenar Viejo, where we thawed out in a bar. 

After the church, we lost the yellow arrows, and wandered around the town asking for the Camino de Santiago. Few people had heard of it, but eventually someone pointed us in the right direction. 

Leaving town, we walked along a wide path between two dry stone walls. Flourishes of yellow broom and the occasional bush of purple heather marked our way.

We crossed a highway, and then a stone bridge, and continued along a wide farm road running between mesh fences tall enough to keep in a giraffe, but angled outwards at the top, as if to keep humans out rather than animals in. We climbed steadily towards distant mountains, eventually turning down into a valley and the town of Manazares el Real where we found lodgings at the Hostal la Pedriza. Twenty-four euros each, but very comfortable. Beds with sheets, hot showers, and towels in the bathroom rather than hot-air germ dispensers.