Puebla de Sanabria to Zamora - 74 miles

It has been a long but rewarding day: almost silent roads, few villages and plenty of countryside with some miles of rough track through an isolated and beautiful landscape added for good measure.

I set off under clear blue skies and for an hour followed an empty and gently undulating road as it curved through the grey granite and purple heather moorland that has started to dominate the landscape now, hopefully signs that I am now out of the main hills and my days are becoming easier. Another road - more of a potholed track - took me through the heart of this landscape; remote and wild, I shared it with nobody. Wide tracts of heather gave way to natural grassland and clutches of spindly trees which themselves gave way to pine forest as the track gently took me higher, giving views to the horizon of the snow dusted foothills of the Cantabrian mountains and down to the blue waters of the Valparaiso reservoir that sat between them and me. The rough and shaky gravel track meant I had to slow my pace but it did give more time to enjoy these surroundings.

That track may have been shaky but it made me feel more in touch with the landscape. Roads seem to cut through their surroundings, pushing them aside, while the trappings of the modern road - the signage, the barriers, the smooth tarmac - are all aimed at keeping you focused on that road and contained within its environment. Roads are designed for speed, to get you to a destination as soon as possible, and are not defined by the terrain to the same degree as an older route, routes that seem to have more affinity with the land they cross. I travelled through beautiful countryside on roads before and after that track but neither of those sections left me with the same sense of engagement, the same sense of being a part of what I was cycling through.

With that gravel behind me and back on asphalt I was again able to increase my pace. Apart from the occasional house set back among a landscape now comprising of dry shrub and thinly spread woodland - some black from fires some years back - I saw little evidence of habitation until I reached Ferreras de Arriba. This small village was my intended stop but I arrived not long after midday. My morning cycle suggested that the last forty-five miles to Zamora might be easily achieved, the last part of which also seemed to show a lot of water making me think of flood plains and flatness. I was proved wrong on both counts.

Although that decision seemed sensible it was also possibly a little rash. This morning I have once again fallen foul of Spanish holidays, this time a bank holiday in the province of Castile and Leon which I entered yesterday. My plan to stock up on food before leaving was scuppered and the holiday also meant there was little likelihood of cafes in the tiny villages I would pass being open, if they even existed. 

The afternoon was a harder affair than I had anticipated: on a number of occasions I slipped into my lower gears as I climbed over one low valley into another, around each corner the hope of a descent often dashed. Camping out was always an option while I remained fairly remote, a night under the stars and an early arrival tomorrow into Zamora a tempting thought. But I was in no rush and the kilometre markers on the road were a constant countdown to my approach to the city (although often it felt as if there was a fair bit of time between them).

Eventually the land became a flatter agricultural patchwork of green, yellow and brown. Not flood-plain-flat as I had hoped but certainly easier than previously. The fates gave me one last long climb to reach the Zamora city outskirts, all shopping centres and low-rise housing, before I made it to the old centre. When I walked here two years ago from the south I seem to recall my first view was of the old city, high on its cliff above the Douro river. It was a view that had probably not changed in centuries so this modern Zamora came as a surprise. But I was glad to have arrived as I was tired and hungry and my first thought was of food. 

In the city centre the streets and squares were heaving with people enjoying the bank holiday and the bars were packed, although in that Latin manner it was more joyous throng than claustrophobic crowd. But true to form here in Spain there was no food to be had before eight at the earliest. It was a problem I had sometimes experienced on my walks through Spain if I had done a long day: having to wait to eat and until a time when you would much rather be already fed, and resting for the following morning.

I killed time until eight wandering the maze of streets that is Zamora. It is an old city, but a city with old buildings rather than of old buildings. There is an interesting mix of the ancient, old, the sympathetic new and the straightforward modern as you walk around; you can wander a long main street of contemporary shops and businesses and find halfway down a twelfth century church or Palace frontage. But the mix works, the centre is practically car free and between them they set the tone and personality of an engaging city. It is a lovely place to visit.