Spain Hiking - Day 5 - Sept 28 - Penalara National Park

We headed out early for Cotos and the pass close to Navacerada. We drove past Rascafria and the monastery at El Paular. We park in front of a restaurant Marcelinos and made our way to the park office of Penalara. The last time I was here was in 2005 when I hiked to the mountain lake with my 70 old mother, my sister and Cam and Kate. The guys had all brought full weather gear but looks like we were going to have another fabulous day with temperatures in the 30Cs. The hike took us to a mountain lake. Here we got lost but found the right trail after talking to a park warden. It turns out she was the person I had talked to on the phone from Canada. We continued on the trail passed the Lake of the Birds (Pajaros). Here the trail made a sharp ascent to a series of false summits until we reached the top of Penalara. From the summit you could see into the valley of Lozoya, the ski resort at Navacerda and the line of summits called La Cuerda Larga, the long Cord. To the west was the province of Leon & Castilla with clear views to Segovia and La Granja. We meet quit a number of people on the summit including some amercian from florida, a Scotsman and quit a number of older spaniards. Mike had pack a pack of wine and we enjoyed a drink of wine with our jamon and chorizo sandwiches. The return trip to the car was not as long since we had already done 3/4 the route. We return to Manjiron and had a large salad as we were getting tired of eating meat and cheese. We again had some wine and beer and made our way to the heli pad to play guitar and keep up the villagers.