Day 1 – Madrid to Colmenar Viejo

Day 1 of our Camino, So everything went well. We managed to get the train from… well, first of all, we posted a bag to Santiago with all of our stuff that we didn’t need, and that went fine. The post office, the Correos, were very helpful. 

 

 

And with that done, we grabbed some breakfast and managed to get the train to Tres Cantos. We were avoiding walking out of Madrid as we both have fairly bad feet. We were a bit worried that a day walking on pavement could end our Camino on day one.

 

 

So, like quite a few people do, I think we decided to get the train to Tres Cantos and that worked out really well. And then a very slow, easy walk, we thought, from Tres Cantos, just over 10 k’s, to Colmenar Viejo. It seemed like a very long 10k’s to be honest and there were lots of stream crossings along the way as well which were interesting. I’d heard about those. Thankfully the water wasn’t too high and we could use the stone blocks to cross but it was still a little bit precarious and a couple of times we thought we might fall in. 

 

 

But it was overall a really nice walk, lots of animals, there was lots of sheep and cows. The walking surface was really nice. But the last bit into Colmenar Viejo was a real drag, like 3k’s uphill. And then once we got into the town, it was another k uphill to the hotel. 

 

 

So like always on these days, the last 2 or 3k’s seem to take forever. But we’re in the Hostal El Chiscón, which is one of a couple of places that people generally use here, which seems quite good. And we’re looking forward to our day tomorrow, walking to… Manzanares el Real except looking at the weather it’s going to be pouring with rain all day.  

So that will be an interesting day but today was a good one – good start.