Day 31 -

From El Barco de Avila to Casar de Caceres (88 miles)

We had purposefully camped a couple of miles from what we thought was a fairly brutal climb of about 500m at Tornavacas so we could get the legs warmed up to tackle it in the morning. This climb turned out to be more like 200m and followed by what can only be described as a cyclist's best dream. A drop from 1500 m to almost sea level. The descent took a good hour to complete with winding roads and speeds of up to 40 mph at points.

We took turns to slipstream with an old man who was on his way to Plasencia as well. Stopping at Plasencia we realised Matty had another broken spoke (potentially something to do with his bike being a vintage Peugeot number!) A good hour was spent eating fruit from the local market on the plaza whilst waiting for Matty's bike to be fixed. The best salesman in the world works in this Market. Chris asks for two bananas and comes back with a bagfull of unknown fruit!

The next stop was Cañaveral, where there were no shops open to buy dinner and we knew we certainly wouldn't survive the night on the neater assortment of nuts and cereal bars that we collectively had. Myself and Chris were sent off in
The direction of Casar de Caceres in order to buy tea before any shops close there (usually before 8pm). The cycle around the massive lake between Canaveral
And Caceres was hard work and the climb out of the lake basin threatened to dash any hopes of eating tonight. However, we made it just in time to buy dinner from a tiny shop in the town and waited a short while for Matty and Char to find us.

Once we were back together we cycled back up the road to a beautiful lake just off the main road. Unfortunately there were no fish nibbling our toes tonight but we made up for it with the clearest star-gazing that wild camping can afford. Complete with shooting stars to a soundtrack of very strange wildlife noises next to the lake!