Praised assistants and world conquering haircuts.
We are making our way to the Retiro. To get there we are going to skirt a little to the east. This will mean a bit of wandering round the Manzanares, which divides the park we ended in yesterday/ Luckily a cyclist has been along the tracks we will follow, which will take us round the A-40 / M-40 junction. We have not talked about Madrid - and we really should. Madrid, as more than a selection of careless dropped Neolithic pottery, comes into existence in the 9th century when Cordobese emir, Muhammad I, established a military outpost to protect the somewhat rebellious Toledo from northern attacks. By the 10th century the outpost had become a town of 2000 and in the 12th century it was described as a small city and solid fortress. While Toledo’s fall, in 1085, Madrid’s fate is debated. Some say it suggested to be 1083. Castillian-Leonese settlers moved in; the mosque became to a church and a town centred on livestock, leather and building cities grew. A fire ...
