Getting Here.

Feeling sick because of the awful smell produced from some incense stick. It was so artificial and woke me too often with this overwhelming odour! Hostel X.

Young lovers in the room: ear plugs at the ready. She's hot, and German, he's annoying and Cayman ... They were quiet and slept separately: I think it was a little snog.

Ate late, but was asleep by midnight. Awaiting the doors to open for a coffee and I'm not far from where my lift collects me at seven.

But I was shattered. Arriving at the hostel around ten thirty I was driven to find a small "ración" or simply flake out: the belly won and I ate a confit of lamb and some fishy thing called Pericana, which was simply too salty for me! I polished off the first copa vino in moments and, with the assistance of the second copa, managed this Alicante speciality.

***

Here we are, three Spaniards and I, heading to Madrid on the A-3. We just stopped half way for a coffee. This was so so necessary: 5 hours broken sleep doesn't work at 47! Tonight I must have quiet, darkness and no pneumatic bliss!

It's a little controversial to head straight back into carne, but again I'm left with little option with the array of tapas in the roadside Hostal/Restaurante we stopped for twenty minutes: I headed for very tasty chicken wings(complete), slow roasted and perfect. Let's see how long I feel OK? The driver is happy to drop me at Atocha where it's not far by Renfe to Toledo. We'll be in Madrid around eleven. It's cold in Cuenca Provincia.

***

Madrid Atocha is crazy. Especially when every single cell of your body is screaming out for sleep. Bloody lusty teens! I should have jumped on them! It's a real pitfall as I get older: hostel/backpackers crowd and being afraid of jumping on top of noisy lovers!

A brief conversation about the geological lecture with some twenty-something's saw them go blank as they really thought the whole planet was molten lava below our feet - don't they understand gravity? I guess not. Neither do I, but I know it's proportional in the inverse-square law (or something beyond my understanding) and the further down we go the last chance of leaving with our shoes on!

In Atocha I, we, were instructed to climb onboard the wrong train. I'd just set out my picnic and taken my boots off when some officials told us it was the next train. Rather than tie my laces I left them off and walked in stocking-ed feet quite some way! It was early enough that there wasn't much detritus on the platform so my socks are reasonable.

Now I am in Lizarran - which is a Basque pintxo-ria balancing my life between palillo corto, largo, sidra, txokoli and some sweet herby vermut from Toledo: Arlini - which is very medicinal, but not Basque.

My eyesight is bad tonight! It's taken me a while to realise these glasses lenses are absolutely finished! There is nothing I can do to polish them clarified and some toughening treatment is beginning to peel off! I almost swapped them for the only pair I have as an alternative: a pair I bought back in 1997 or a pair of John Lennon specs from "how I won the war" which I last wore back in 1992!

Driving up to Madrid I was reminded of the washed out pastel shades I had experienced last time in Castilla, which are very different from the dense, and desperately dark, greens, greys and browns of those loamy fields behind my home, but still speak of the poverty of winter marching across this land.

As a quite sensible Yorkshireman I'm going to eat at British times! None of the late night eating I will have to experience soon and intend to be snoring consistently, alone and un-fucked in the head until breakfast and I'm away again on The Way.