We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning and climbed our way up to a gate in the walls of Avila. Avila is known for its complete walls and its connection to St Teresa.
Apparently Avila's walls rank among the best preserved mediaeval defensive walls in the world.
They stretch right around the city for 2.5 kms, at a height of about 12m. There are 8 monumental gates,88 watch towers and more than 2500 turrets. They are built of lovely golden coloured stone and look fantastic when they are floodlit at night.   (see yesterday's entry)
As we walked up to the city there were storks flying around, and although it is only January they were nesting on lots of church towers ( and there are an awful lot of Churches!)


 The old city inside the walls is a maze of narrow streets and sunny squares. There is a large Cathedral built into the city walls, looking more like a fortress from the back. We did not pay to go in as we have seen rather a lot of Cathedrals in the last few days and it was not what we had especially come to see
 
 
Avila is a deeply religious city and many pilgrims visit because of its connection to St Teresa.
She was probably the most important woman in the history of the Spanish Catholic Church. She was born in Avila on 28th March 1515, one of 10 children. After her mother died she was raised by Augustinian nuns and joined the Carmelite order when she was 20 yrs old. Not long after , her legs were paralysed for 3 yrs by a mystery illness. In 1560 she had a vision which inspired her to reform the Carmelite order. They became a very strict Order, living in extremely basic conditions and going barefoot in all weathers.  They also used flagellation to atone for their sins.
Not surprisingly, this did not go down well with the mainstream Catholic Church, which in the 16thC was not known for its simple style of life, to say the least. Teresa also persuaded St Juan de la Cruz to undertake a similar reform of the equivalent male Order.
St Teresa founded many convents of the Carmelitas Descalzas (shoeless Carmelites) all over Spain and her writings and teachings were very popular.  She died in 1582 and was canonised in 1622.
The house in which St Teresa was born no longer exists, but the Convento de St Teresa has been built over it. At first we got a bit lost trying to find this, but a very helpful Spanish man saw me puzzling over a map and directed us the right way - in fact we had been round the back of this big building!
The Convent is free to enter and was completely empty when we visited. There were very few hints to find the important parts so we just wandered around.
We found the St Teresa Chapel and then went through a doorway to find a reconstruction of the room in which she was born and a window looking on to the garden in which she played as a child.
 
There is a museum next to the Convent, but this did not open until the 1st February. This was a shame as its contains the relic of St Teresa's finger, complete with ring. Apparently Franco slept with this next to his bed every night when he was the Spanish leader!

Avila is a lovely city and we enjoyed wandering the narrow streets in the sun and just sitting by the walls taking in the views.  Every other building seems to be a Church or a Palace.
On the way back to the MH we could look down and see, outside the walls the Monasterio de la Encarnation , where St Teresa lived for 27 yrs. It contains a reconstruction of her very bare monastic cell.
 
After our very enjoyable visit to Avila we decided to move to the campsite fairly nearby at El Escorial.  
To get there the NV1 road has to climb and wind up and up (and down and down) the Puerto de Guadarrama at 1511 m , the gap in the Sierra de Guadarrama The lorries grind up in the right hand lane and all the cars go winging round the curves past them.   
We had a 'moment' when a typical Spanish white van man misjudged his overtaking speed and our length and nearly took our front wing off!! Loud sounding of horns all round !!