Lugo to Tordesillas:

We left Santiago de Compostella quite late in the morning and headed east towards the old Roman city of Lugo.This town has UNESCO-listed Roman walls in near-perfect condition.They were indeed impressive - it was just a shame that the city inside was so modern.In the early afternoon the place was dead! The afternoon siesta when everything closes has taken some getting used to.Even supermarkets close down and don't open again till 4 or 5pm.The only places open are the cafes or bars. So with nothing else to do (the only cathedral of note worth visiting was shrouded in scaffolding and closed to boot), we settled in some chairs in the square and had a delicious lunch - more rationes, this time calamari and ham with melon, the melon being the sweetest green melon ever but with a thick, stripy, green skin like a pumpkin.

Now we were away from the coast, the landscape changed to heavily wooded hills.No eucalypts for a change, but a dark green forest.The area was also heavily mined with industrial towns producing mostly coal.As a consequence there were many power stations and pylons and power lines crisscrossed the countryside.We climbed quite high (up to 1250m) and the huge white wind generators lined the tops of the mountains.

Once out of the mountains, the start of the central plateau of Spain was before us. Now was a drier, brown and yellow landscape - no more of the coastal verdant green.Large farms that seemed to be growing mostly hay, which had now been cut, and sunflowers stretched to the horizon. After a long drive we checked into a dusty campsite on the banks of a river in the little town of Tordesillas.