Etapa 11.

Good night's sleep, occasionally woken by the noise from the heating system, but it's ok. All my clothes are fresh, folded and packed. My shin is still ill and will be every day until I properly rest it? Left the room as I found it and headed out for desayuno before sunrise. Really would like to bathe in a long deep bath soon, but that will also have to wait until Blighty? More churros and chocolate, instead of tostada con tomate, and fresh orange juice from fresh Valencia oranges is very good - Zumex machines I'd never twigged before what their use was as so few people in the early morning seek zumo de naranja. Twenty six kilometres today, but three villages on the way into Toledo Provence then Toboso and tilting at windmills like a fool or someone who yearns for different times?

Finally a break along the way where I can get a little brunch. This hasn't happened at all along the Camino between Alicante and now and there is another town prior to the end of the stage today where lunch must be a possibility? This will really help my shin. Blessings!

***

Oh I can see mountains ahead - they're not exactly tomorrow, but it's the end of La Mancha!!! At first I thought La Mancha would be relentlessly similar and leave me still chained to the rigours of cyclical human existence. This illusion is difficult to shake with how we seem to experience life, but I'm sure everything is totally now and never repeats because every passed emotion, etc, is really a response to now. Just as every cloud is unique or flower is original. The moment now as birds took flight is only this instant but it is replaying in my mind as I try to return to that spontaneous moment!

Did Don Quixote have to walk through fields of mud to reach his woman in El Toboso? If he didn't he's no real man! The tall church tower is a kind of reminder of Rapunzel tempting the passing testosterone invigored youth, but I've never read more than the first book of Don Quixote so don't know if he came to El Toboso and found his dreams: he's a very incompetent Lancelot as he goes charging off at windmills and I doubt he knew what his Lancelot was for and who he was merrily thrusting it at?

Finished today and it's much more either guide suggests: I am at 34 kilometres without any deviation: I'm am not a deviate or deviant. Today is today and tomorrow does not exist - this is wrong! Only now exists.