Why are we always walking or cycling uphill?

Manzanares El Real

Weather:  High pressure in the mountains 

Found a campsite near a place called Manzanares El Real which offered both the chance to do some walking in an area called La Pedriza and a 40 min bus ride to Madrid.  When we arrived we cycled into town to check out the walks.  We both thought it was a gentle uphill ride so should be a nice downhill ride home.  Haven’t worked out yet how it was in fact uphill both directions!

Tried the tourist office first: closed.  A notice re-directed us to the advice centre in the town hall: closed.  But the library was open and the very nice librarian gave us a pack of printed walks.  When I looked through they all seemed to start a few kilometres out of town.  So the next morning we caught the bus in to check it out at the tourist office: closed.  The advice girls at the town hall gave us a map to Centro de educacion ambiental Manzanares which was a couple of km away.  Once there a very helpful girl explained that most walks started from a place called Canto Cochino which was 3.3 km away from the centre.  When David asked how long to the Canto Cochino she looked at us and said “1 hour, but you are strong so 40 minutes”.  Seemed a bit of a trek before even starting the walk she gave us but it was a nice day.

After 3 hours of steady climbing up the mountain we decided not to wait for the Canto Cochino for a nice place for lunch.  After another 30 mins we decided to call the ridge we had reached “the summit” and turned round.  After about 20 mins descent David checked his altitude app and we were still at 1511m above sea level.  Canto Cochino was only 1027m so we decided to celebrate the fact that we are poor at following signs on walks rather than just very unfit walkers!  When we were waiting for the bus home we worked out where we had gone and altogether we’d walked 23km, so no wonder we had trouble standing up to get off the bus at our stop.  We obviously need more educacion ambiental.

Had to have a sudden lie down half way up!

But there's nothing like a cup of tea and piece of Christmas cake to get me on my feet again

The Summit