Looking down from the old railway viaduct above the village of Hervas, at dawn.

I followed in Faye's footsteps and headed up into Hervas village for my run at dawn, picking up the trail she found, which it turned out was an old railway, complete with a ghost station, signalling apparatus, cuttings, and a viaduct - you could still see the lines at a junction in the village. Faye, on the other had, donned her wetsuit and swam in the reservoir, although Skye jarred her shoulder by tugging too hard on the lead yesterday which is causing her a bit of pain, so she wasn't there for long.

We got out of that bloody favela at midday, and hit the road towards our next site, glad to be free. It was a three-hour journey, first on motorway, but soon enough on more interesting cross-country roads. The last 50km or so were particularly winding, badly maintained mountain roads - I find such roads quite fun really, but it seems nobody else does!

The new site is so gorgeous compared to the last one. At the top of a hill, looking down onto the village, fresh air, big sky, huge pitches, no more than a quarter full (if that), with a good covered pool, play park for the kids, a little restaurant. It's totally laid back, peaceful, chilled. We've figured out that we need open space for our style of camping, and this is it. We feel like we can relax again after a quite stressful couple of days. Now if we could only sort out the flies...

We had dinner in the cafe/restaurant tonight, which was fine, nothing special - but again, just nice to sit watching the sun go down, in the "big country". They call this area, which is about 100 miles south west of Madrid, the "Serengeti of Spain", which may be a bit ambitious, but it is certainly rolling plains with trees, scrub, low forests, and so on. 

As we turned in for the night, a trumpeter was practising down in the village, probably not realising his efforts were carrying so far up the valley to us - his rendition of "Happy Birthday" (or "Cumpleanos Feliz" in Spanish) was certainly a sound to behold, but it was the only sound apart from the crickets.