One side of Madrid to the other

Introduction

This was the first time I ever did anything you might tentatively describe as an adventure – at least it was something unnecessary and out-of-the-ordinary, and involved leaving the house and doing some exercise – it was also meaningful and fun, so that’s a bonus. The podcast version is with Marietta Sandilands, my fellow adventurer.

One Side of Madrid to the Other

If travel is about freedom, then travelling on foot is the ultimate expression of that.

Walking, hiking, trekking … it’s just you and your feet, no relying on public transport, no complicated equipment, no carbon-guzzling engine, just one foot in front of the other for as long as it takes.

So, one Friday morning, I got off the metro at Colonia de los Angeles and zigzagged through a few streets until I got to the western edge of Madrid: the entrance to the huge Casa de Campo park.

I stood in Pozuelo, a posh town attached to Madrid, but not officially part of it, and in front of me, through that inconspicuous little gap in the wall, was Madrid:

Not the grandest of gates into the city, that’s for sure.

I waited for Marietta, who, because her house is much nearer than mine, was late.

Case de Campo is stunningly beautiful, and the early Autumn sunshine on a weekday is one of the best ways to see it. There was almost no one around, and it feels like being out in the wilds, not on the edge of the second biggest city in the EU (by most measures).

I had never been before, although I’d skirted its edges on the train many times. This was all new to me, and it was exciting to be setting out on something that can be classified as an adventure. It’s all very well watching other people do adventurous things, it’s quite another to do it yourself, and as tame as this one might be compared to so many others, it’s not every day you set out on a 25 kilometre walk from one side of a city to another.

As Paul Theroux left his home in suburban Boston on his immense journey to the tip of South America in The Old Patagonian Express, he wrote about sharing the train with commuters on their way into Boston, they having no idea he was on a different journey, briefly running parallel to theirs; his an epic trek of thousands of miles, theirs a routine run into the office. I’m not comparing our little walk across Madrid to his mammoth rail journey the length of the Americas, but there is something fun about being on a major mission and rubbing alongside people doing routine stuff, they having no idea they were in the presence of two wily adventurers crossing the entire city.

We passed the back of the zoo, hearing some sort of exotic bird squawking away, and we huffed and puffed up a hill, worried that we were already – only about 45 minutes in – gasping for breath. As we got closer to the city, the park got busier with runners, cyclists, wheelchair athletes, schoolkids in big noisy groups and a cluster of police on horses, presumably practising for the upcoming national day celebrations.

After about an hour we got to Lago at the other side of the park. We sat and scoffed a slab of tortilla overlooking the lake, resting for a bit and enjoying the sun. The next leg was through the city centre, so more familiar turf, and we knew we had a bit of altitude to gain as we were near the lowest point where our path crossed the pathetic trickle that passes for a river here in Madrid.

We got to our feet, still excited about the fact that we were actually doing this, and carried on around the lake. We curved down the road, over the river and decided to veer from the official route I’d painstakingly plumbed into Google Maps, and head instead into the beautiful gardens of the Royal Palace. This was another new one for me, I don’t think I even knew this whole section existed, having only ever seen the palace from the other side.

The stunning view immediately demands a photo … but the couple in front took an age with their own photos, first him, then her, then them both … and then … as we stepped forward, expecting that to be the lot, thinking it might be our turn AT LONG FUCKING LAST, what with us having waited PERFECTLY PATIENTLY while they captured EVERY CONCEIVABLE ANGLE … but no, she then took out two FUCKING cuddly toys from her bag and arranged them on the stone balustrade for their own series of photos. To be fair, the guy did it all with grace and practised good humour. Good for him, I’d have been consumed by impatience and embarrassment. The things we do for sex love!

We walked on.

We walked up the main path and, with the stairs at the end being roped off, skirted around to the right, then nipped across a bit of lawn to get on a path that looked like it went out to the main road near Plaza España.

Back on the official route we passed the Senate, then the wide pedestrianised road alongside the top of the Palace, hung a left past the Opera House, down the busy Calle Arenal shopping street, before ducking right down a back street to get to Plaza Mayor to tick off our first official waypoint. When programming it all into Google Maps, I had had to include several stops along the way to ensure we went through key points and didn’t just whizz across on the quickest route: Plaza Mayor being the first.

Unfortunately Google Maps didn’t accept our skirting around the edge of this ancient pickpocket-heaven as having legally ticked off the waypoint, and it spent the rest of the day trying to direct me back to do it properly. When I’d first devised the route, I’d nearly killed myself (and those around me) trying to get the bastard thing to stick in Apple Maps, eventually having to admit defeat. I’d then spent ages trying to tweak the Google version so it would send us the way I wanted to go, so by this point I was unwilling to risk losing the route altogether by resetting anything, and so soldiered on, ignoring the incessant instructions to go back to Plaza Mayor.

It was now lunchtime, so we ducked into Bar Postas for a calamari butty, or bocadillo, as they say in Spain. There are very few places near Plaza Mayor that aren’t expensive tourist traps, but Bar Postas offers a simple-but-decent feed for only €4.50 a pop, so there were no complaints from me.

Refuelled, we head to Sol with the idea of grabbing a pastry treat at the Mallorquina shop on the corner. That didn’t work out so well, the shop heaving with so many customers that we couldn’t even get in, never mind get served. We liked the idea of a cup of tea and a cake later in the afternoon, so we carried on, promising to ourselves that we’d find the perfect spot further up the road.

Sol is the official heart of the city and the place from where all kilometres are measured on the radial motorways fanning out from Madrid – this works quite well given the shape of Spain and Madrid’s location in the middle. There’s not much else in Sol other than things that are famous for being famous, like the Tio Pepe sign, the clock tower used on New Year’s Eve and the statue of a bear eating fruit from a madroño bush … all nice and emblematic in their own way, but nothing to spend too long over.

We walked up Calle Alcalá to where it meets Gran Via, and the lovely Metropolis building which has become a bit of a hit over recent years. I don’t remember it getting much attention back in the day, but Madrid has always lacked the instantly recognisable Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or Empire State Building that others cities have, so perhaps the Metropolis – although not grand in scale – is emerging as the frontrunner in the can-you-name-a-landmark-building-in-Madrid competition.

Most of the rest of the walk is uphill as we make our way out of the Manzanares valley – a pathetic river it may be, but it can still cut a valley into the world if you give it enough time. We trudged up from Banco de España to the Puerta de Alcalá, and Madrid’s other famous park: the Retiro. Again, Google had other ideas, wanting us to hotfoot it up the main drag, but we disobeyed and passed through the grand gates and continued around the edge of the park – although by this time we were bored of taking photos, and also a bit bored of walking.

We were tired now, and although I don’t think either of us seriously thought of giving up, it was tempting to abandon the plan, have a beer, then head home where there are things like showers and sofas. There was some discussion about where the halfway point was, Sol would be the logical choice given it’s big claim is its centrality to the city, but my recollection of the route was that there was far more of Madrid to the right of Sol than to the left, and I feared we were still some distance from the halfway point. Fortunately I was wrong, and when I checked later, it turned out the halfway point was around Retiro.

We walked on up Calle O’Donnell, not the most Spanish of names, but named after the most Spanish of noble military and political figures, Leopoldo O’Donnell. O’Donnell – of Irish descent – was big news during the Carlist wars when the accession of Fernando VII’s daughter Isabel was challenged by supporters of her uncle Carlos. O’Donnell picked the winning side, that of Queen Isabel II, and so, amongst other things, got a street named in his honour.

The city started to get scruffier and less grand, now feeling much more like a regular city with noisy traffic and nondescript buildings. Soon the big RTVE Torrespaña communications tower loomed on the horizon and dominated the view as we plodded on, toward it, then past it and over the M30 motorway, an orbital nightmare for those of us that don’t drive it often enough to understand its complex system of lanes, exits and variations.

Madrid is a totally different city on this side of the M30, and we feared that finding a dainty patisserie to get a dessert and a cup of tea was unlikely in this hilly neighbourhood of high-rise flats.

Wearily we checked Google to see if there were any options nearby, and settled on a bleak-looking local café that didn’t look like it was in any immediate danger of being awarded a Michelin star or two. In the end though, the little Viña del Mar café was perfectly nice and friendly, and although they didn’t go big on the fancy puds, we enjoyed a cup of tea and a stale industrially-manufactured bun and felt ready to tackle the next bit.

The next bit was the most exciting for me.

I had already learnt a lot about my adopted home city during this walk, I had seen many beautiful and interesting places that were new to me, but the enormous Our Lady of Almudena Municipal Cemetery held the most fascination. The scale of it is immense, almost impossible to take in, and even as we entered through a broad gate, we could only see bits of it, views obscured by blocks of nicho grave structures, large family tombs and acres of trees. We walked through the graves, me finally giving up on Google Maps and us now following Marietta’s phone, marvelling at the scale and history of the place, with many famous Spanish names buried here.

The phone directed us to one edge and to a gate that was padlocked and rusted. There was no getting out this way, the walls were too high to scale, and we – well me, at least – too old to try, and so we ducked back north and tried a different gate, but it was also locked. We were well aware that this is how horror movies start, and so hoping we didn’t have to die some grisly death, or worse, go all the way back to the start, we began skirting the perimeter in the general direction of the route we wanted to take, eventually finding the main entrance at the northernmost point. We’d wasted a lot of time and energy trying to avoid being locked forever in the cemetery, but we’d made it out in one piece, albeit pointing in the wrong direction.

We were now on the final stretch. The landmark we’d chosen for the chequered flag was Atlético Madrid’s stadium, the <insert sponsor’s name here> Metropolitano. The stadium sits on the far eastern edge of the city, up against the outer orbital motorway (the M40). Technically Madrid extends a little beyond the stadium into an empty field on the other side of the M40, but this is our adventure, and if we say the edge of Madrid is the Atlético stadium next to the M40, then it’s the Atlético stadium next to the M40.

We walked around the side of the cemetery, glad to be free of its clutches, and made our way to the other side of the locked gates. There we turned north-east, this last bit still a good hour’s walk to the end, and it was mainly along a green and leafy busy road, past another park, and then into the newly developed area around the stadium. In short, our chances of finding posh baked goods was vanishingly small.

Our feet, legs and knees were all achy and taking it in turns to twinge in worrying ways. I hadn’t done much training for this adventure, only a few lengthy walks across London on a recent visit back to the UK, so serious injury was always a possibility. I ignored such distractions, and trudged on, and on, and then on, eventually – after the surprisingly lovely little El Paraiso Park – finding a café so we could have a well-deserved sit down and that dessert we’d been thinking about since Sol.

La Ruta del Sabio was a nice little spot, but because they didn’t have any posh cakes, we drank our tea, stared wearily into space, and tried not to think about the remaining kilometres ahead of us … we needn’t have worried, once we groaned back to our feet and back into the street, we could see the stadium right in front of us. As we got closer, we saw bars, cafés and bakeries galore, but the moment had gone … it was nearly 7pm and we just wanted to acknowledge our accomplishment, jump on the metro, and go home.

We did a bit of high-fiving, happy to have achieved our goal, and discussed other adventures that might be similarly do-able given our time and budget constraints. Could we walk across other stuff? Is walking across things a niche we could develop and become big time content creators? Is there such a thing as an “everyday adventure”, or does that sound too mundane and unambitious?

All these questions and more were discussed as we tried to correct our posture by sitting up straight on the metro, re-entering the world of the normal people who don’t walk across cities.

Marietta is a personal fitness and nutrition trainer, and can be found here on Instagram (her post on this walk is here).