Road trip | Day 2. The bell tower of Iglesia de La Magdalena seen from Carlo's rooftop bar in Toledo.

I learned about Toledo from Luis Buñuel's brilliant autobiography 'My Last Breath'. Toledo was a weekend haunt for Buñuel when he was a student in Madrid in the 20s with Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. On his second visit he had a vision while drunk in the cathedral cloisters and decided to found his own congregation: The Order of Toledo. From 1923 to 1936, Buñuel led regular excursions from Madrid in search of 'delirious episodes stimulated by the consumption of Yepes wine'. Some of the haunts are gone but the magical atmosphere that attracted Bunuel, Dali, Lorca and the rest remains.

Hotel adequate (San Juan de los Reyes). Best eats - Taberna Skala tapas bar (rowdy and cheap, like me 😊). Best drinks - Taberna el Botero for cocktails. Best sights - the roofscape from Carlo's and the maze of narrow medieval streets at midnight.

100 miles from Segovia. 3 hours riding avoiding windswept motorways. 1 rookie error - luxuriating over 5 star breakfast instead of riding early before hottest part of day.

Read Robert Majano's essay on The order of Toledo here -> https://a-desk.org/en/spotlight/the-order-of-toledo-bunuel-and-the-occult-versus-the-hegemonic/