A rebel without a clue.

Most of this afternoon I have managed to sleep after the longer second section of the Camino today, which is perhaps something missing recently? After Villacañas i decided to leave the suggested Camino and head up towards the hills behind and all along: as it feels La Mancha is losing the plains! Just when I'd got sick to the back teeth of the monotony of the skillet, which bakes beyond human reason in August, there are obviously a rim of mountains ahead. It's been a long time since I actually got to Santiago Compostela on these Ways - June 2013. I've a memory of the crowds of pilgrims the last two times I passed through. But I've learnt quite a lot about the Way, and how you can be alone, since then. This time I've not seen a soul until yesterday when a guy coming up from Murcia stayed at the same Casa. It's his first Camino, which he aims to finish around 25th December in Fisterra and the host, who did my head in a lot with his whittering, gave him such a brea...

Sometimes I get so nervous when I enter a bar where locals are engrossed in their lives. Behind me a guy chicks Euros into a one armed bandit and the old men cluster at the other end of the bar. I am hungry, but a little bored of Tapas on the bar: but this is Spain and this is their way! But sometimes is not heated up properly. It's a little rushed at times: in the microwave for a few seconds only. It needs longer! I am paid up for another day(€20), but now the rain got here. The casa rurale is cold, but calm for the moment. Really I think yesterday in the gentleman's home was too intense for me and I didn't start today in quite the correct manner. Indeed I had to have a second breakfast in Villacañas before set off on the longest part of today. The weather gets to folks here too. It's obvious as they're so used to warm this kind of cold is very difficult to deal with. Today all colour seemed washed out in a pastel haze, and it was total except for a few fragments o...

Locals are up clipping back the vines ready for the next vintage - which shows such dedication considering the amount of labour required to cleanly prune every bushvine? *** Yesterday was a day of lots of vines and little else to occupy the distance to the first "Gîtes d'étape" style accommodation I have seen on the way! It's is known as Casas Rurales and there is another place similar coming along. Today is the first day of a lot of rain. No prevarication today with the fact I must set off in all the waterproofs I brought: even if this means wearing gators too. It's not hot so wearing the trousers isn't the pain in the neck I find when it's warm and humid! Time for breakfast as the TV suggests, untruthfully, the world is going up in flames. 24 hour news is just there to fill the populace with fear. *** After all these years of walking I still don't really know what it is I go hoping to find? There are occasions where all depression and anxiety vanishe...

A huge bed last night, with plenty of layers, and I didn't arise for an evening meal. Now I'm waiting for the Hostal to open its doors. It's a little after seven and I think I can hear folks stirring next to the door into the cafeteria? School buses head off and I must wait patiently. It's another cold morning and I made one mistake when I didn't put my boots in a position to dry: so they're a little damp. No it doesn't open until a quarter to eight: enough time to realise my boots are quite damp. Oh well. My fault. I was tired last night, so stayed in bed once they showed me to my room, but I forgot to deal with my boots. The damp is always the case when I'm sweating, walking through puddles and gore-tex is doing it's worst! Now I'm preparing to carry on a 8:30am. I've a choice of two ways: one misses out a few roads and a town and is 15kilometres, the other offers cafés etc! Missing out the towns and staying rural this morning! "Is it?...

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 tod...

Happy to be in a warmer environment than the last two nights. And to have reset my attire to fresh. This town is crap. It's a road running between Madrid and Albecate with sour faced solumn men trudging by not acknowledging me. As it's cold, dank and drizzling it's possibly the weather doing it? Some loud and Bolshoi youths stand on a few corners kicking the pavement and kerb for entertainment. Sounds like many British towns during autumn however by July most locals kids will be falling about flaking under the burning sky whereas in the UK it maybe another season of kicking the kerb: if the Tories win. It's my intention to be asleep before nine, warm and toasty, ready for tomorrow and one of the most famous vistas in all of literature: the very windmill sails Don Quixote went tilting at in his blind chivalric stupidity. This means I'm in Toledo Provence and only five days off the goal. My shin is brutal after two or three hours on the way. Popped into the bar neares...

Today I feel fresher. Took me a while to get up from the warm sleeping bag and step out to -1°C in San Clemente. Long John's on this morning. It always looks odd wearing these tight legged affairs, but they are very thermal. Headed out to find café and stumbled around for thirty minutes until a Churros cafe was gathered around by the he Sunday hunting fraternity. Now I'm warmed by chocolate and churros and heading out into the world beyond San Clemente where all the world is still and tinged with a haw frost. Dogs howling and barking and the distant sounds of gun shot: oh this is such a holy day? One where holes are driven into innocence. Then more rain. An hour of very intense, but fine, drizzle and the continuous breeze, which I had forgotten the last few days, as a companion after Santiago de la Torre - a fine ruins of a castle. Biting off chunks the bread and Salchichón secco, which had been bouncing in my lunchbox since Monteforte del Cid, I faced the final hour feeling mo...