Day 5 - Almadén - taxi 16 km: walk 12 km

Not a great nights sleep - it took a long time to go to sleep and a scratchy throat kept waking me up. Was it the water - which tastes a bit heavy in minerals and feels astringent - or something else?
Anyway had a nice chat with Martin over breakfast and discovered todays walk in the Parque - literally- is not flat but has a 540 metre climb right at the end.
The morning was lovely and cool and the taxi took us to the gates of Parque National Sierra Norte.
The initial section is flat and filled with cork trees in full production. Of course I didn’t take much notice of the second part of the Parque’s name - Sierra Norte - which means northern highlands. It wasn’t till I saw a profile map of this stage at breakfast that I realised I was in for a big ending - I called today the Pyrenees of the South. Haha
While at times it was a very challenging day we saw deer, a small lake, dried river beds, cork trees and had a tree covered mountain (with a view) to climb before we got to the lovely white town of Almadén.

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