Travels in Spain, The Aqueduct of Segovia

When we had retired to bed the previous night there had been a clear sky so it was disappointing to wake up to the sound of falling rain and on opening the shutters a full examination of the weather revealed overcast skies and a rather soggy, looking sorry for itself, Ávila.  But it was still early so we closed the shutters and slept on for an hour and hoped that it would improve.  Sadly this was not to be and when we went down for breakfast it looked certain that this was going to be an umbrella sort of day.

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Travels in Spain, Palacio de Los Velada in Ávila

Having finished our tour of El Escorial we left  and returned to the town of Guadarrama passing for a second time the Valley of the Fallen but this time not trying to make an uninvited appearance and then we took the quick route underneath the mountain via a tunnel rather than over the top and then a toll motorway towards the city of Ávila where we would be staying at the four star Palacio de Los Velada hotel.

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Sierra de Guadarrama, Ávila to Segovia

After we had finished our drink it was reluctantly time to leave.  We had liked it here but it was time to go and drive to our final destination, Segovia, about fifty kilometres away to the east.  This involved a drive along the line of the Sierra de Guadarrama, a spectacular mountain chain that rises to nearly two thousand five-hundred metres and spans half of the Sistema Central, the central mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula, which runs in a southwest to northeast direction and effectively splits Spain in two.

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