The Ham Nomads

21 Jan 2015. <ES> Valencia de Don Juan, León; Zaratán, Valladolid, & Olmedo, Valladolid, Castile y León —

We had parked ourselves into the aire in Valencia de Don Juan facing southeast, so the rising sun greeted our front windscreen with whatever warmth it could muster.

We got ourselves up and going. Leaving the school and driving through town, we found a Lupa supermarket, and did a shop for the next few days — it's fun shopping when you can only just make out what you are buying!

We then moved the van to a layby just below the castle we had seen as we came into the town. We walked up to it. The castle itself was closed — there's a museum inside — but we were able to walk around it and get a feel for the place. It's in a park at the top a hill overlooking the Río Esla — quite a nice view!

The trees in the park have been treated in a strange way — the branches have been grafted to each other to make looping shapes, and to join adjacent trees with similar loops. Weird!

We enjoyed the view of the river for a while, then walked into the town centre, only a few hundred metres. Fascinating. We were enjoying getting a feel for Spanish life.

We found a newspaper seller's shop — he actually had the Times for the last few days — and a pile from a lot earlier, but we weren't that desperate for old news from last November. We're sure he would have loved to offload them on us!

We next called in to Zaratán, on the outskirts of Valladolid, a largish town north of Segovia, for a Macca's break at a large shopping complex there, Equinoccio Park, and did a little computing and a little exploring before going on to our aire.

Our next aire was at Olmedo, a walled town about half-way between Valladolid and Segovia, leaving us just a short drive into Segovia for the morrow.

Distance driven — today, 99 miles ( 159 km ); to date, 11,758 miles ( 18,923 km )