I found myself walking around Ávila this morning in the very early hours, before most people were stirring. Shortly into my walk, an illuminated sign outside a farmacia told me that the time was 06.33 and the temperature was 2°C. If I’d had any kind of a brain at all, I would have been tucked up in bed, but Trinny and I were in Ávila for just one night and I wanted to get a feel for the place without the distraction of the visitors. I figured that walking alone on cobbled streets before dawn might be something to savour, and so it proved to be. Apart from one man, unsteady on his feet and likely making his way home to bed, I had the sleeping town to myself.

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