Riolobos | Taking Our Time

May 6 – We stopped in the Riolobos plaza to say good morning to the storks before heading out of town. I love how dozens of smaller birds make their nests inside the tall stork nests. Always such a flurry of activity and birdsong in the morning.

Today we are walking to Galisteo, seven miles north. Most hikers pass this town by without stopping, but we are going to spend the day. We walk over an old footbridge.

…and admire some pretty flowers or weeds, depending on your perspective, growing by the side of the road.

We pass a solar energy farm, just drinking up those rays. Southern Spain is the perfect place for solar power.

Galisteo doesn’t show up in our online resources, but local tourists come here to spend a day in the old walled city. The wall was built by the Muslims, of course. They really liked walls. The houses now exceed the confines of the walls, so there is an inner city and an outer city.

We climbed to the top of the wall and walked all around the city.

Our guidebook raved about the food at our bar/hostal and they were so right. Purple cabbage and shrimp was unbelievably good. Best meal we’ve had in a month!
399 miles to go.

May 5 – Twelve miles planned for today and rain in the forecast. We had our coffee and toast with ham and cheese breakfast at the hostal, and were on the road by 7:15. We climbed a mighty big hill as the sun came up.

At the top of the hill was a shady wooded walk. We haven’t had too many of those in Spain. Very nice.

Then the rain started, first just a drizzle, then it poured down.

Mist on the hills:

The sky cleared by noon, then got breathtakingly beautiful.

While we were admiring the clouds, we missed the turnoff to Riolobos. We are so used to following yellow arrows that we didn’t realize this road would not be marked. We saw the town get closer, then get farther away! By the time we were sure we had made a mistake, we’d walked an extra two miles, then had to reverse course and retrace our steps to the turnoff.