Madrid to Toledo and Salamanca

Friday 11th January

We spent most of Friday at the campsite in Madrid. I took advantage of the free wifi and finished the marking I had for Keele. Mike did the laundry (but the machine broke down), cleaned and set up the van for future travel and various other useful jobs. We filled up with diesel and LPG, did a final tour of the city taking in the bull ring (2nd largest after Mexico City) and headed out for Toledo.  The drive down was uninspiring urban sprawl and commercial areas but arriving in Toledo as the light faded was impressive.  We arrived at the one of the old gates adjoining the ancient wall. It was all lit up and looked lovely.  We found some street parking close by, had supper and then went for an evening walk around the city. Most of the streets were narrow and cobbled and it was easy to get disorientated in the dark but we enjoyed walking around yet another beautiful Spanish city full of wonderful buildings.  The cathedral especially was quite awesome. We settled down to sleep around 11.30pm but it was quite noisy on the street to about 1am so we had a short night as we wanted to be off the street before we had to pay parking charges.

Saturday 12th January

We left Toledo and were soon in beautiful countryside.  We had purposely chosen the scenic route to Salamanca which took you over the Sierra de Gardos range. We had coffee in our van at Mombeltran, a small mountain village outside of Arenas de san pedro. Our layby stop was right opposite a castle which pleased Mike and then we continued upwards stopping for lunch outside of Navacepeda de T. It was a beautiful drive and apart from the highest point when we were in the clouds we had good visibility.  We arrived at an aire in El Encinar which was about 10k outside of Salamanca.  All of the motorhome spaces were taken up by cars as there was a local football match being played on the pitch alongside the car park but once the match was over we had the whole place to ourselves.  We decided to have an evening 'reccie' of Salamanca so drive in.  The weather had turned colder and by the time we got home it was raining heavily and was very windy.  It was probably good that we were now out of the mountains.

Sunday 13th January

Following our exploration last night we decided that we would visit the university buildings.  The University has been a recognised seat of learning for many centuries.  I was surprised to find out that Christopher Colombus had come here to lecture about his travels.  The University was arranged around a cloister with lecture theatres for different subjects lying off this rectangle. Some of the rooms contained pews and desks that were hundreds of years old.  They looked very uncomfortable and I cannot imagine modern students putting up with those conditions. 



The University also contained a very ornate chapel and a stunning library with manuscripts from as far back as the 11th century.  It was interesting to see some that had sections cut out by the Jesuits as they did not agree with what was written. Once we had visited the building we went back outside to study the portal of the building to try to find the frog which is hidden in the plaster frieze. Even knowing it was sitting on top of a skull did not help me.  We walked back to Plaza Mayor, a very grand square but still has the ubiquitous McDonalds which we went into to skype Mille.  We then again topped up the van with fuel, failed to find a launderette (but not desperate yet) and took the road to Portugal.