Day 36 - River Jugar to Embalse de Buendia

Bit of a misty start but the sun rises at the back windows and the cuckoo is singing again. Lovely quiet night though the weir did sound a little like someone had left a fan heater on! 

I’m feeling a little ‘off colour’ when we wake. Not sure today will be a busy day. We’ve decided to trundle on along the river for a bit and drive to the ‘Devil’s window’ a viewpoint that’s only fifteen minutes or so away and has an incredible view along another gorge created by the Jucar river. First a brief stop in the local ‘supermarket’ a bit like an out of season campsite shop with empty shelves and packs of hair bands… but got the water and bread we needed. 

The Ventano de Diablo is reached through an eroded hole in the cliff (the window) and opens up a really unexpected view. It’s very easy to access from the roadside so there are a constant stream of Saturday tourists popping through to look. We spend some time with the binoculars and as well as numerous crag martins, get very excited indeed when we see a golden eagle. Totally unexpected and beautiful!

Once we’ve calmed down we turn down the offer of brightly coloured pottery in the car park and drive another 15 mins or so to stop two. 

We’d had warning that ‘The Enchanted City’ was a bit of a theme park … G reminder me frequently on our journey of the line in the ‘slow road’ guidebook and we were prepared for crowds. Having p to pay (€6) to enter a piece of open land is a bit galling, but despite the Korean coach party and the Spanish guided tour and even the need to follow a waymarked circuit it was fun to see such incredible rock formations and matching them to their ‘look alike’ names. It wasn’t a long walk maybe 3km or so but it was fascinating and we strayed a little taking photos so it filled up a big chunk of the day.

 First sight of the reason processionary caterpillars are so named too as ‘the stick’ across our path started wiggling. We took care not to touch their irritating skin but we did have a good look!

Walk finished it was time for a sit and an ice cream, one of the staff guides by the kiosk was excited that they had English visitors and pointed out this was unusual and asked for us to encourage others to visit this part of Spain. 

We decide we are going to stick with water and head for a big reservoir that’s sort of on the way to Segovia. To do this we are going to use minor roads.., a fact google still doesn’t understand and seems to prefer a mix of A roads and dirt tracks through fields. Pen and paper out and we plot away driving through yet another type of landscape. As soon as we get out of the mountains (which is surprisingly quick) we get rolling hills and green fields edged with trees … it’s almost English parklands.

 The road itself is concrete and solid but seldom used and we pass two cars in almost and hour. Lovely landscape and makes a change from tight bends of the rivers and mountains to be back on dead straight roads.

We arrive near the lake at a town called Sacedon. We need some fuel so buy a little as the price is a bit high. Very odd that the petrol station shop feels very English, with its prepacked sandwiches and  bags of sweets … guess it may be that we are nearing Madrid but it’s decidedly less rural than we are used to here despite being a very small town. 

From here we follow the lake south to Buenda where we’d hoped to spend the night at the camp site, a journey that involves driving across fairly narrow dam, but the site is closed this afternoon with a phone number posted that’s unanswered so we are back ‘wild’. Helpfully, we notice a person size gate that gives us access to their disposal point. Not what we’d usually do but needs must and there’s no other option. 

There’s a track leading to a short ‘Trail of the Faces’ that we plan to do tomorrow so we follow that to the carpark which is our stop for the night. There are a lot of picnicking Spanish families but they leave as light falls, leaving us and two other vans, one large and white and one that appears ‘nomadic’. Though still not feeling ‘right’ my concerns about having caught a virus haven’t come to much yet thankfully. We have a late walk as dark falls and what starts of sounding like a nightjar become an incredibly loud chorus of cicadas or similar and there’s a scops owl almost directly overhead. In bed the sound of cicadas is deafening and we can hear Scops owls in all directions but no other signs of life… lovely spot and sleep ready for a morning walk. 

Miles so far: 2054

Steps today: 8,855

Overnight: car park for the ‘Walk of Faces’ Buendia. Free