Away from the Crowds

Reviews

If one of us disappeared from his sight en route he would hee-haw

If you want to sit on a polluting ship with thousands of others, sleeping in a little cabin, or if you want to fry on a hot beach or even sip G & Ts by a chlorinated hotel poolside with a few dozen strangers, then an 'Away From the Crowds' experience is not for you. However if you think you could fall in love with a donkey, would love to walk with him or her, your partner and/or kids in the open countryside with all the flora and animal wildlife you might encounter then it certainly is. You can go a whole day from breakfast until your destination without seeing anyone but the wildlife and yourselves. You can also feel good about supporting the local Spanish economy, staying in small to medium sized rural hotels and posada's and meeting the locals. It is helpful to have a few words of Spanish though especially if you pop into a village bar when you arrive in the afternoon as we did in Gallegos; you'll find the locals very friendly, interested and welcoming.

All stay-overs are of a surprisingly good quality although interestingly different from village to village. They are expecting you and have food and water ready for your donkey, a field or place for him/her to stay overnight and cerveza, una habitación, comida y unos desayuno para ustedes. The route you take has been carefully selected and well documented for you. Once or twice we did have to scratch our heads and use a bit of initiative en route so as not to go the wrong way but AFTC have never lost any of their travellers yet. In any case you have an emergency phone number if you should need it but we never did, despite managing to turn up at the wrong hostel in Arcones on our first day ! Hostel La Cerca is on the right as you approach the village; we went to the one on the left !

And we did fall in love with Azabache, our donkey and he with us ! If one of us disappeared from his sight en route he would hee-haw, prefering us to remain together as a team – and that's what we were. He also did it when we were about 30m from his little paddock when we were on our balcony in Pedraza; he could hear us talking and wanted to be with us – and us with him, but we kept our voices down after that, not to distress him. You can imagine what it was like when we finally had to say goodbye in Gallegos.

We are 70 and 71 but are talking about repeating the exercise next year, God and our osteoarthritis permitting. And we'll ask for Azabache; we know he will remember us.

Peter Davies, UK

the holiday felt so tailor-made and untouristy

Thank you to the team at Away from the Crowds for arranging our fantastic donkey trekking holiday in the Sierra de Guadarrama. It was such a unique experience - beautiful countryside, lovely local guesthouses and our own donkey, Galindo, to look after (or maybe he looking after us). Everything was really well organised, but the holiday felt so tailor-made and untouristy. Absolutely loved it and we want to adopt Galindo!

The walking on its own would have been great, especially the Canada Real, but doing it with our faithful Galindo made it something really special. What a character! He was hard-working and uncomplaining (when he got going!) but a real softie and a little bit cheeky - we absolutely fell in love with him!

Positives:

- clearly Galindo, who was so good natured. It was a privilege to be allowed to look after him and it’s a real selling point for the holiday (everyone I’ve mentioned it to thinks it’s a brilliant idea)

- the holiday was a lovely way to get away from everything - the countryside was so peaceful and we only saw the odd cyclist and walker

- the book with directions and suggestions was comprehensive and really useful - we didn’t need to look at the maps and it felt so tailor-made. The extra info and history were great too.- a range of lovely guesthouses to stay in - it was nice that they were so different and all felt very local

- tasty picnics

Highlights:

- the Canada Real and the views of the plain

- stick and wire fences and deciding whether a track is ‘main’ or ’side’! :)

- swimming in the river in Navafria

- the walk into Pedraza

- the lovely guesthouse with the pool in Gallegos - very welcoming and comfortable with great food

- the fact that all the villages where we stayed felt very local and untouristy

- people calling out “Burro!"

Anecdotes? Well, we did decide to take Galindo for an evening stroll in Requijada on a lead - it was like having a very big Labrador with us! He seemed very happy, especially as it was another opportunity to munch on tasty plants along the way. Lots of people wanted to stop us and find out where we came from and what we were doing with our donkey. Luckily Eduardo speaks much better Spanish than me :)

Jane Hyde, UK.

We really enjoyed our holiday

We really enjoyed our holiday. All of the locations we stayed in were lovely and it was great to know we could contact Senderos at any time for support.

As you likely know, we walked for 5 days with the donkeys during the heat wave. The temperature was a bit hotter than we were hoping for but that is just luck!

We did have a sick donkey on our third day and I really appreciated how responsive Jaime was to our calls and concern for the donkeys.

Nina Fancy, Canada.

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