Monday 27 oct. 2014 Almaden de la Plata – Monesterio 27.5 km.

Bivouac as swineherd next to the pigs.

Yesterday I arrived in Almaden. But because of the painful hindquarters of Leon (behind he has no irons and in front the irons are too worn), we didn’t advance quickly.  On the numerous gravel and rocky paths he often stopped moving, with the result that our speed did not exceed 3 km. per hour average. This way it takes me many hours walking to get my 27.5 km per day. And much less time is left to rest, to buy food, prepare food, filming etc. The weather was quite nice, the scenery beautiful, nobody on the road. So that was positive. Tomorrow I immediately will attach hoof boots to Leons hindquarters all day long. Because I found no shelter, I slept outside in my bivouacsac on a grassy path, which was lined with wire on both sides, through a gate one could enter the path. At both sides a high fence along the path. 50 M along the path I stretched a rope across the path, to close in Leon. I nestled into my bivaksac on the grass and listened to the semi-wild pigs, which were kept in a meadow next to my path and two meters lower. Passing the night with Tosca against me also is no real fun, because at the slightest infamiliarity she started barking loud and long, which of course sincerely disturbed my sleep. Nevertheless I slept o.k. under the sky galaxy, just like you did, only you in the Nl. didn’t see the galaxy because of the bad weather. That night dog Tosca many times thought it was necessary to warn me for the pigs, and each time with a deafening long lasting barking. Because she was lying against me, then I rose up, grabbed her at her neck and tried to teach her not to do what she has been taught by her former police boss with so much endeaver in her first year as a policedog: barking. Phew! The lack of sleep will be somewhat made up by the super long night, from eight to seven.
Now I’ll report about today’s problem. Arriving at a pond I released pony Leon, so he could drink. I let him go, to make a picture of him. Leon enjoyed the coolness of the water so much that he walked ahead into the pond. I dashed after him, soon noticing that both Leon and I no longer had solid soil under our feet. I wondered if a horse also would follw me swimming. So it did. Though we quickly swam to the side, my camera appeared broken, but even worse, my android didn’t work anymore. So no phone, no sms etc. Fortunately my i-pad still was o.k. and so was Rudi’s film camera (Rudi wants to make a movie of my trip and therefore gave me his film camera). This means that I no longer can phone to a pilgrims hostel to ask if I can can spend the night there.The drama ended when I fell asleep (for a while) just before Monesterio).