Early(ish) rise today, had a quick breakfast with Mummy while Daddy stuffed clothes into the rucksack because at last we have good weather in the mountains! It's been over a month of nasty weather out there, and pretty bad in Madrid proper. Cracked out the crampons, picked up the sticks, opened up the map, and bought a couple of loaves of bread before hopping into the car and flying off towards Collado Mediano.
Tito and Tita were surprised to see us there that early. In the end, if there is no traffic, it takes barely over half an hour. And at 10ish when we left traffic was barely nil: all the skiers were up on the slopes already (all the parking areas are full by 9) and all the people out to lunch haven't even thought of getting started yet. We weren't worried about the parking as we weren't going to the slopes area.
Waited for everybody to finish breakfast and get ready and took the cars to the outskirts of the village. Today we have an easy walk (Prima is at that age where she is too big to carry all the time and too small to do much walking) but Daddy was dying to use the walking sticks so he brought them along. After a few minutes walking through an urbanisation and next to the road we finally got to the path up the mountain, heading to a spot between Monte Redondo and Cabeza Mediana, two of the small mountains near Collado Mediano.
From there, with a short rest to admire the view of the Cuerda Larga in front of us we headed to the top of Cabeza Mediana, which is more commonly called Cerro del Telegrafo as there is an old telegraph tower there. Here we stopped and had lunch, and Mummy and Daddy had a coffee: we had got a vacuum flask for Christmas from Grandpa & Oma and they were dying to use it.The way down was pretty steep, so the sticks came in handy after all. At the bottom I needed a feed so we used the last of the boiling water from the flask to make me a bottle, which I gulped down (food in the countryside tastes nicer).
In the evening Tito & Tita went out to a film club after all us little 'uns had been put to bed. Pretty easy babysitting for Mummy and Daddy, which is good as they will need all their energy for tomorrow's walk.
