As I was lying awake early in the morning not knowing what time it was I heard a distant noise that gradually got louder and louder. It consisted of bells with occasional shouts, baa-baa-baaing, and the odd moo. Apparently a group of men were doing a mass move of sheep and cows and it took about 20 minutes for the whole group to pass. They were very near the campground – likely on the small side road that goes into the hills behind.

As I finally looked at the clock on my i:pad and saw it was only 7:30 I promptly rolled over and tried to get a bit more sleep. It had been a chilly night and even with my fuzzy black blankie on top of my sleeping bag I wasn’t really warm.

Having finally arisen just after 9:00 I had a really nice hot shower, then tapped on the campervan door to see about morning tea – Colin and Mo were still abed, although at least they were awake.

After breakfast we got the bikes off the rack, assembled the Mo-bile and went for a little ride. Just a few km up the main road – which is quite nice to ride on – we crossed the Rio Luna to check out the village on the other side – not much to see there, so back to a coffee shop we’d passed.

It was lovely – sitting outside on chairs on the grass, under some nice large trees – almost like being in someone’s courtyard. And the very creamy coffee was delicious.

Rather than heading straight back to the campground – we’d only ridden a few km – we continued down the same main road until we came to a junction. Not knowing what was ahead or how the road was we turned around back to the campground.

After another nice shower we had a late lunch picnic style outside at the table. Colin had gotten a crusty baguette for himself from the bread-man that delivers to the campground every morning, and we’d found some lovely cheddar cheese at the last store we’d shopped at. Together with some sliced veggies it was a tasty lunch.

We saw a poster on the office wall about a horse event of some kind coming up in the nearby village of San Emiliano in a couple of days and have decided it would be nice to go see what it’s about.

The next day instead of going for another ride we opted for a long walk. Colin had picked up a couple of maps from the office and there are trails all over the place around here.

I wanted to see if we could reach the lake so we hiked up the small road that runs by the campground – we did have great views of the Rio Luna just below us but didn’t go far enough to see the lake. It was starting to get quite hot and I was starting to get hungry so we turned back.

We saw a ‘for sale’ sign on one side of the road – it looked like there were at least two little cabins and a bit of land – hmmm!

Back at camp I cut the day-old baguette into small rounds and fried them up with a bit of onion. Some nice cherry tomatoes and the chorizo we got the other day, along with the cheddar cheese made another great picnic lunch.

After spending some time down at the bar – me drinking cold red wine and using the wi-fi – we had a quiet afternoon before going back to the bar for our dinner. The nice dutch fellow that, along with his wife/girlfriend, help run the campground put the race on for us – it’s the first day of the Vuelta a Espana and is the Team Time Trial. That didn’t last long, however, as several local men came in and the tv was quickly changed over to one of the soccer matches that were on.

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