15 February to Villaneuva de los castillejos

Turns out that there was only one other person in the Youth hostel, an older lady. A shame as the hostel must of had a capacity of a hundred or so young people and was very pleasant by the river and with a swimming pool. Probably busy in the summer. I was glad it was open as the hotel next door certainly was not.
I caught the first ferry of the day to cross the River Guardiana to Spain and the pretty village of Sanlucar de Guardiana. Like Alcoutim opposite it in Portugal it has a castle and lots of white houses but appears a little smaller.
The next section of the walk to Seville is based on the Garmin map of Spain in my gps. I had three options for getting to Seville, go to the south along the coast with its many accommodation options and sea views, go to the north which had more hills and one assumes scenic terrain but appeared to have few places to stay, or go the most direct route across what looked like farmland. I choose the most direct route not wanting to rule out an area without having seen it. I then identified where there were hotels or similar on the line of travel and asked the Garmin gps software to pick a walking route which it does by avoiding main roads as far as possible.
Following this route along dirt tracks worked well for the first 11 km from Sanlucar passing through grassland and scrub and across a small river. A shepherd even offered me a sweet as he watched his sheep. Then after a stretch of road the gps had selected an interesting route through some hills that looked attractive. Sadly the gates to the selected track and similar ones were padlocked and there was a high fence often topped by barbed wire. It was clear I was not welcome in an area that looked like it was being managed for hunting.
So it was 7.7 km along the road to Villaneuva de Los Castillejos (according to the footpath sign directing you along the road), a total of 21.3 km for the day according to the gps.
The Hotel Andalusia where I had planned to stay was not where the gps thought it was but turned up opposite the Petrol station after a bit if wondering around.

The village of Sanlucar de Guardiana