To Toledo

From Madrid I went to Parla, a suburb 25km outside of the city, which had a tram where the old road to Toledo used to be. This was exciting because most of the time I have know idea if Laurie Lee went the route that I am going and I felt fairly certain that this was the way he would have taken. When I arrived in the town my Couchsurfing host, Juanjo, was still at work so he told me to buzz another resident in his block and pretend I was a commercial correor. He had left a key under a plant pot outside his front door for me, all in the good faith that I wasn't going to steal his stuff which I had somehow earned without even meeting him. His flat was small and pristine; with a single bed in the corner with three Atletico Madrid scarves laid proudly on top of it. I went into the bathroom and there were Atletico Madrid dressing gowns and a fine selection of designer toiletries all arranged as if in a high end shop front. From his selection of fridge magnets I could see that he'd travelled a lot and the pin board above his computer suggested that he'd done one of the caminos and was into marathons. By 7.30 I had already formulated the character of Juanjo in my head from the contents of his fridge and I went to meet him at the station. Juanjo was slim (from the marathons) and had bright dark eyes like a rabbit (from the carrots). We immediately set off on the ground tour of Parla which took about five minutes, started at the town hall and finished at the supermarket where I needed to buy my food for the next day. One thing I hadn't been able to guess at was Juanjo's sense of humor (although he had had a 'true Scotsman' related fridge magnet) which was dead pan and caught me off guard at first as he added cat food to my check out items; 'it was all I ate when I did the camino'. We returned to his flat and had pasta and Sunny D and watched westerns. Juanjo had printed off my route to Yuncos for the next day and suggested that I didn't start until 9.30 as it would be to cold for me and it wasn't so far anyway. We pulled out the sofa bed and when I was finished in the bathroom I was bemused to find him in his pantaloon-style pyjamas looking like one of the lost boys from Peter Pan. I settled down to sleep as he planned his trip to London for the Chelsea-Atletico match the next week.

I left the left shortly after Juanjo had gone to work and followed the sandy tracks to Yuncos. Not the most beautiful part of Castilla La Mancha, the walk was unnotable other than I came across a man who had a very strange looking allotment in the middle of nowhere with naked manequins and only closer inspection, his head was covered in tattoos. I quickened my pace.

I stayed a Hostal outside of Toledo, owned by a mother and her son with a three fingered hand. It was a bit of a dive, and I shared a room with a middle aged American woman and a young Asian girl. The young Asian girl was hopelessly somber and I took a disliking to her because she said my sock smelled. The American, from Seattle (me: 'like Sleepless in Seattle!' Her: 'I mean, yeah, I suppose.....') talked at me for a good half hour from the comfort of her bottom bunk as she scrolled endlessly through four months worth of holiday snaps. She was semIY retired and worked a seasonal job with good tips ('cause you know in America they tip' she said looking at me meaningfully) but was so tired of living out of a bag she was returning home. 'I hated Morocco, it's full of liars, I've been to Peru too, I mean that's a third world country too you know, but they just want to help you. And everywhere here is so expensive. I'm sick of it, eating junk, spending money. Not like in Peru.' And so she lamented that she hadn't spent four months in a more poverty-stricken, underdeveloped country. Cry me a river. 

The next morning all hell broke loose, as the three-fingers served up three (one on each finger, ha.) stale madeline cakes for breakfast. Seattle was not happy 'I'm gonna rip them to shreds on trip advisor'. I packed my bag pretty snappy, keen to get out of there. As I reached the door I was joined by the young Australian guy from the night before ('my budgets €100 a day but I'm gonna slum it'). He was heading for Madrid and we made our escape from the mad house together. That's not to say that they were all a bunch of J D Salinger phonies. Three-fingers definitely only had three fingers.