Arroya de la Coronilla to Arnedillo

We had a great nights sleep which was well needed after the fiasco the night before. The storms stayed away and the wind dropped right off before bedtime and when we went to bed at 10pm it was silent and we both slept right through until 7:30am this morning.
At 8:30am we were ready to leave. I didn’t want to hang around to long incase the park rangers were doing an early patrol and I wasn’t sure if where we parked was legal. It was certainly more legal than the motorhome we passed on the way out that had pulled off of the dirt track and pitched up on the grass on chocks. He wasn’t there at 7:30pm last night when we were running from the storm so god knows when he turned up.
We drove right through the national park on the N-133 passing through little towns with castles and all sorts of ancient monuments mainly from Roman times although some were older.
We stopped around 11:30am in a little car park in a village and made some breakfast and just after we had finished a van pulled up next to us to tell us that we were on private property. The sign said it was a car park so we think he thought that we were going to pitch up for the night. I didn’t argue, I just apologised and said we were leaving but as he didn’t speak English and we don’t speak Spanish he didn’t really understand so we started Wanda and left. He understood that. He also understood how slow we travel when he got stuck behind us for the next 5 miles.
From the N-133 we left the national park area and followed the A1 for 50 miles until eventually at 12:30pm we turned off and picked up the mountain pass heading for Ardeno. We had travelled this road before and it was just as beautiful this time with bridges and gorges, tiny little hamlets that we passed through and the high mountains with Vultures soaring overhead.
Finally at 1:30pm we arrived in Arnedillo. We have been here before and it is one of our favourite places and it ticks all of our boxes which are mountains, good views, quiet, small, lots to look at, caves and cave houses, and hot springs.
We were here for the hot springs as we hadn’t really found any on this trip yet and we love them, so after a quick lunch and cup of tea we got changed and headed down the hill to the Main Street and then down another hill to the river where the hot springs were. Being a Sunday it was busy but I wanted 2 dips in the springs atleast while we were here so we were definitely getting in.
There are 3 pools in Arnedillo, a cool pool, a medium and hot, and then there’s the freezing river. The medicinal hydrotherapy way to use the pools is start of in the cool pool for 2 minutes, move to the medium pool for 5 minutes, then dip in the river for minutes and then sit in the hot pool for no more than 10 minutes.
We skipped the cool pool and went straight for the middle pool then dipped in the freezing river and then went for the hot. It is the weirdest feeling as not only do you feel light headed all of your tight muscles crack as the tension is released. We didn’t talk much on the way back to Wanda as we both felt a little stoned.
Back at Wanda we sat on the benches at the back of Wanda and watched the Vultures soaring overhead. No matter how hard Ellie tried she couldn’t get them to come down for a photo.
After dinner we sat in Wanda and watched the sun set behind the mountains and as the little LED street lamps came on in our airè the cats came out to check the bins for food. We saw 2 black ones first of all but then others stated appearing from nowhere and in the end there were 5. Ellie went outside with a big bag of cat food we had brought at Lidl on our last shop for just such an occasion and she through some handfuls around the outside of Wanda and we had all of the cats munching and crunching for 45 minutes outside.
At 7:30pm we closed the doors, windows and roof hatches and settled in for the night the temperature was dropping fast outside but it shouldn’t be to cold tonight.Read more